CSI: Asia
by Black Gargie
Summary: You've seen CSI and CSI: Miami. Now let's have a slight taste of CSI from the land of the East!
1. Intro of Characters

A/N: I am pretty much a fan of CSI and its episodes. It is pretty cool and really breaches the boundaries of forensic science and I find it pretty interesting. I've done quite a lot of research to come up with this case. But first, let's start with the introductions.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            INTRODUCTION OF CHARACTERS

            Jonathan Mark David – He is a Grissom look-a-like, as in attitude, not the hearing problem and the looks. He's smart and calculative and has this unpredictable analysis ability. Very different from the conservative attitude of his Reverend father and head nurse mother, those whom he got the patience and smarts from. He is much of a loner (surfing the net and gathering info on his favourite stuff) except while working on a case with his team members. His younger brother was kidnapped by a slightly demented man (Jonathan recognized him as one of the people in church who came to his father for confession) when he was about 14 years old and he was the only one to crack the case among the baffled police department. Being acknowledged of his analytic abilities, this homicide detective soon became the head of the crime lab within 2 years of entering the police force. During his free time, he loved to indulge himself in anime, especially Genzomaden Saiyuki and Gundam Wing. He can't seem to get enough of it. His team members loved him and hated him at the same time—love because he can produce a good, clean analysis on things but hate because during off-hours or at sudden moments, he would rave about his obsession on his favourite anime.

            Judith Lai Chi In – She used to be in the wrong side of the law, as in stealing, playing truant, signature forgery and stuff. Despite her rich and luxurious life earned by her land broker father and kindergarten Headmistress mother, she'd rather 'wallow in mud' than being 'spotless and clean'. She would be often seen happy and gay and all, but no one can ever see through her happy face what was she really feeling inside. Having witnessed her best friend Marina shot to death and finding out then that she was her half-sister, things began to change. With her outlaw skills and her unlimited patience, her talent in forensics was recognized and soon began to work under Jonathan Mark David. She's also a linguist, as in she could speak English, Chinese, Malay, Cantonese, Hakka and a little bit of Hokkien (Chinese dialects) and some French, Japanese and German. Her ultimate dream is to become the world's greatest manga-ka (comic artist) and she could be often seen carrying a file around filled with her artworks. The only one who could tolerate Jonathan's anime obsession.

            Rachel Yee – A bookworm and a very, very studious girl. She can be considered the Human Library because any question shot at her, she can answer it precisely and clearly. The team members often search for her when they have some doubt about things in the case. Born and bred from a decent family, her lifestyle is practically independent and no-nonsense kind. She collects books and you wouldn't be surprised if you stumble upon the study room of her home. Though fully equipped with knowledge of forensics and topics related to this field, her first love would be literature. Books like **Jane Ere, Romeo & Juliet, Much ****Ado**** About Nothing, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, **etc…You name it, she got it. The most practical of all the CSI team members and is sometimes the object of admiration and affection to other men in the forensics, though she rejects them all due to the reason that they are 'not intellectually enhanced' as she was. The reasons for her to choose forensics to a potential English professor will be revealed in this fic.

            Rebecca Liew Ee Tze – She is a cheery pie and has a knack of creating handicrafts during her free time. Since her father was a traveling businessman, she spend more time with her mother and her 3 sisters, and the frequent 'girl talk' between mother and daughters contributed to her cheerful and carefree attitude. She had always been fascinated with forensic science and she had high scores for all her science subjects. Her first love would be Physics, which is why she is mostly into the physics of weapons and bullets projecting and stuff. She has a red ribbon tied around her neck like a leash as a symbol of engagement with her boyfriend Cyril, who is working in Vancouver, that once he earned enough bucks, he'll come back to marry her. Her optimistic and cheerful attitude contributes to the team members in a good way, especially when they are in a tense moment. 

            Elaine Majon – She didn't start out to become a science freak at first, although she took Science Stream during high school. She was more into music and a little bit of literature and could master any instrument within a few practices. You can say she is a child prodigy when it comes to music (the female version of Mozart). But when a mistaken identity caused her friend to receive a shot in the head which was meant for her by a jealous fellow orchestra colleague, her perspectives and interest towards music took a swift turn to forensics, despite the protests from her decent over-protective parents. She refused to let other people to experience the same thing as her friend did and she can make certain cases that involved killing of innocent people get personal. Science has been her way of burying and venting all her misery and guilt towards her past and only when she gets in touch with music via her piano, then she was able to escape that feeling of guilt. Judith was the only one who could understand her pain as they both were same in a way.

            Justin Chang – A private doctor at first before entering the forensics. Has high knowledge in medicine, first aid and anything to do with science, which fits his profession in the crime lab as a coroner. Has a cheerful nature but when it comes down to business, he portrays a very astonishing serious figure. His expertise in able to figure out in detail how, when, where and why the victim dies earned him high respects among his juniors in the coroner business. He was hired into the crime lab personally by the PD because of his expertise. Other times, he is a movie buff and knows almost every movie shown from past to present and often update himself with the latest or incoming movie. He has a passion for horror movies and the supernatural, so whether you ask him about the movie **Urban Legend, Psycho, House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting** or **Sixth Sense**, he can tell you precisely the whole story about it. 

A/N: Now that we have a brief intro about our main characters, we'll get on with the case, shall we?


	2. The Murder Begins

A/N: This case is something I've cooked up from a small combination of other horror movies. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            The quiet housing estate of Taman Kingfisher was slightly disturbed with the loud blasting noises coming from one of the double-storey houses. Songs like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Aerosmith and Blink 182 could be heard ringing out of the house as the teenagers were having some sort of a crash party. A lot of hullabaloo was going on and the neighbours were either _very_ patient or were really used to it to be able to tolerate such racket.

            Moments later, the phone rang. The host of the party, a young teenager named Lionel Han walked over and answered the phone. He yelled for one of them to turn the volume down a little before picking up the cordless phone and spoke, "Hello, who's this?"

            There was no definite answer, but the boy thought he heard a distant laugh. He listened for another minute and demanded, "Hey, who the heck is this?"

            The laugh continued, showing that the person on the other side didn't intend to answer properly. Lionel hung up and continued to enjoy the party. A few minutes later, the phone rang again and the same thing happened again. It continued for a few more phone calls and the boy thought that enough was enough. He dialed the number of the police and told them what happened. 

            "Alright, boy," the police agreed after hearing his story. "We'll trace the call if you want, but I must say it could be a prank call, since whoever it is must be annoyed with the racket you're making."

            "Well, whatever payback they're doing, it is my right to have a party here," Lionel said haughtily. "Just trace the damn call."

            The party continued as usual for the next 30 minutes or so until the phone rang again. The boy was ready for it. He answered the phone and as expected, the laughing sound continued. Before he could shout out his curses at whoever it was at the end of the line, a bloodcurdling scream was heard. Everyone turned to see the boy's sister practically crawled out of the room of their younger siblings' bedroom, her legs going weak all over. They heard a distant crash of glass from the room and muttered to each other, looking at each other with questioning eyes. The girls came to Lionel's sister's aid. Lionel rushed to her and asked, "What is it? What's going on?!"

            "Our…Our little brother…and sister…Help…!" the sister was at lost of words, almost choking out of shock.

            Lionel hung up the cordless phone and threw it to one of his friends before rushing up to the room where his younger siblings slept. He had left them to sleep in the room (wasn't easy 'coz they wanted to stay up late with them and join the party) and he kept the door closed so that the racket would not disturb them. Everyone craned their necks to see what was going on. The friend who took the phone, Gary Yap, decided to go upstairs and check it out. He was halfway up the stairs when he heard Lionel scream in horror. He took two steps at a time and could see his friend vomiting at the carpeted the floor outside the room. Gary took a look inside the room and could feel the popcorn going up his throat.

            When the phone rang again, Gary took the liberty to pick it up. It was the police, and their voice sounded grave and serious, "Kid, whatever you're doing right now, stop right this instant and get out of the house quietly."

            "Too late," Gary wheezed, his legs going weak as he knelt beside the regurgitating Lionel.

                                                                        *

            Police cars and ambulances gathered around the house of Lionel Han and curious neighbours came out of their homes to check out what was going on. Soon, a Proton Wira parked beside on of the police cars and out came Jonathan, Judith and Elaine. The girls carried their gadget boxes and they all looked pretty professional. They showed their badges to the police standing guard to keep the public away and they were let in. Careful not to tread on anything that might be relevant evidence, they went all the way upstairs to the kids' room, led by an Indian officer.

            "What have we got here, sir?" Jonathan asked, looking around.

            "A very gruesome murder has happened, sir," the Indian officer replied in his thick Indian accent. "The kids were having a sort of crash party down here and the big sister tried to check out the younger kids, and…well, they found them like this."

            The 3 CSI agents took a peek into the room. There was blood and gore everywhere and 3 bodies could be seen on the carpeted floor. It was a terrible massacre. As Elaine and Judith walked over to check the bodies, Jonathan stayed behind to talk to the Indian officer to brief him of what exactly happened before he walked up to the window which was smashed, leaving a few fragments still jutting out of the frame. He peered closely at the jutting fragments and could see a small—very small—bundle of thread hanging on one of the fragments' sharp edge. He took out a pair of tweezers from his pocket and picked up the thread before dropping them into the evidence plastic bag. He turned to his fellow colleagues and asked, "What do we have, girls?"

            "We have two kids who were hacked in the head with something razor sharp," Judith replied. "And it could be something heavy too. Maybe an axe or something."

            "And the third kid looked like it had a stab wound on the chest," Elaine replied. "And…her left leg was amputated. It was a hack job too. Whoever did it didn't hesitate to do so."

            "The things people do to kids these days," Jonathan replied, shaking his head. He looked sideways and picked up something from under the desk. It was a vegetable knife, and its blade was blood-stained. He nudged Elaine and said, "I think I've found the murder weapon for your legless kid there."

            Elaine took it and slipped it into another evidence plastic bag. Judith continued to check out the bodies that were laid before her. The children were no older than 8 or 9 years old and their heads were practically mangled with the hack job done on them. Fragments of their skulls and a good deal of blood mixed with pieces of brains soaked and drenched onto the bed sheets and pillow cases. There were other several hacks on some part of their bodies and she noticed that one child had his right arm amputated off and the other child's left arm was gone. Judith looked around the place and couldn't find the arms.

            "It's clear that this kid was the first to die," Elaine said, checking her share of the dead body. "Judging by the pressure of the carpet, the perpetrator moved towards this kid first and stabbed her. And the stab wound looks a little old, maybe about more than half an hour. Jude, what are the wounds on your kids?"

            "Hmm…" Judith looked at the kids, then replied, "The first boy here had wounds probably about half an hour old or earlier, and the other boy's wounds are still pretty fresh. You're right, your kid died first before the others. And the last kid had to put up with a struggle. There are bloody footprints everywhere and look," Judith pointed at a huge patch of blood on the carpet floor and a few trails of blood which looked like dragged streaks, "he was dragged back to bed after the murderer hacked him."

            "Well, whoever did this was pretty much in a hurry because he actually left the weapon lying around and he escaped from crashing through the window," Jonathan said as he waved the evidence bag containing the thread to his colleagues. "And also," he walked over to the bedroom door and gave it a few raps, "this room is soundproof."

            "How did you know?" Elaine and Judith were curious.

            "I've just talked to the Indian officer. He told me that when the teenage brother, Lionel Han received the laughing phone call from the perpetrator, he has heard nothing from upstairs although they have turned down the volume so that he could hear the perpetrator's voice. Also, all the kids said that they heard a crash, which is this window here, only when the door was open and that they saw the sister crawling out of the room in fright. With blasting music and loud kids yelling and singing and dancing to the beat yet the kids are still able to sleep, this has to be soundproof."

            "What kind of music they're playing?" Elaine asked.

            "Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, things teenagers love to listen these days," Jonathan replied.

            "Rad, really rad," Judith said, nodding. "That's something I listen to when I get in a bad mood. A little louder with the volume and it'll break your eardrums and keep anyone awake all night."

            "Besides, you can tell by the wood it's built out of," Jonathan continued as he rapped the door a few times again. "Artificial. Something you don't see growing out of trees. You hear those police chattering out there with the witnesses?"

            The girls nodded. Jonathan shut the door and it was completely silent, except the occasional distant noises from the crashed window outside.

            "Specially designed for kids who need adequate rest," Elaine said as Jonathan reopened the door, letting in the chattering between the police and the witnesses. "Smart."

            "Hey, Mark David, I heard something about the police tracing the call of the murderer," Judith said as she took a good look at the ashen face of Lionel Han, the big brother. "Where did the police say the call was traced to?"

            "It turned out that this psychopath actually made the call from the extension phone upstairs," Jonathan replied. Judith was the only person who would call Jonathan by his middle and last name. "They found the extension phone just right down there when the murderer made his getaway through the window. I told them to bag it and pass it to me."

            "Oh, OK," Judith replied. Somehow she felt this type of murdering very familiar.

            "We'll need Justin's help to further analyze the bodies," Jonathan said as he made a phone call to Justin's handphone at the crime lab. After giving brief orders, he let the paramedics take the small children away. As the three CSI agents continued to check out the crime scene, Judith overheard something Lionel was muttering to the police between sobs.

            "I can't believe it…our brothers and sister…killed during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival…this is not good…their souls are going to be restless…Hungry Ghost Festival…not a good month to die…"

            The murder seemed to get more and more familiar.

A/N: So, figured out the pattern of this murder? Try and give me your opinions through your reviews, plz!  


	3. The Dead Do Speak

A/N: Now that the bodies are taken to the crime lab, let's see what our coroner has to say! BTW, sorry for the not-so-detailed location of Asia. I believe that the place where our CSI members are in is the rich and busy town of Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, West Malaysia.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "OK, what do we have here, Jon?"

            "Three siblings, namely Jackie, Peter and Suzie Han. Found dead in their rooms practically turned into bite-size meatballs."

            The three mutilated siblings of Lionel Han's were taken into Justin's domain—the surgery autopsy room. He had just done washing his hands and was getting ready with his plastic gloves while turning on the tape recorder. He had a habit of recording anything he had said during his autopsy.

            "Um, is it OK if I talk too?" Jonathan asked tentatively, looking at the tape recorder which was on.

            "Be my guest," Justin replied. "It'll be good to have another human talking instead of me babbling to myself for a change. I don't want to end up catching any unearthly sounds on tape. It gets eerie when you're around dead bodies."

            "Yeah, I can see that," Jonathan shivered a little. "So what's your analysis for the day?"

            "Let's see…" Justin replied as he took a closer look at each and every one of the victims. "Well, this little boy, Jackie, right? He was hacked really hard, and from that clean cut I'd say it has to be a heavy sharp weapon, most probably an axe. Pretty nifty and sharp though. Check the relaxed muscles on his face. There is no indication of shock or tenseness of any kind. The perpetrator must have hacked him in his sleep."

            "Well, at least he never felt a thing," Jonathan said as he looked at the mangled brain of the little boy. With that kind of state, the undertaker is going to expect his job cut out for him.

            "Yes, and the murderer started out with the head too because he didn't want Sleeping Cutie here to wake up the other kids," Justin said as he pointed at the other hack wounds on his abdomen, chest and the amputated right arm. "See these wounds here and those tiny squishy clumps? That's pieces of his brain and skull fragments stuck to it, courtesy of axe-hacking leftovers, and hey," Justin used a pair of tweezers and plucked a strand of hair from his gut, "I found Sleeping Cutie's hair in his colon."

            "Well, Sleeping Cutie sure had a gross end to his life," Jonathan replied, trying to keep his dinner in his gut. Though he had been working in this field for quite a while and has been trained to look directly at dead bodies, he could never hang on for too long. "What about Suzie?"

            "Well, Suzie here is a much kinder case. Let's see…" Justin rubbed his chin and scrutinized the body. "You're in a right track here, Jon. This girl definitely was stabbed, and look," he pointed at the deep gash that ran into her chest, "this guy must have put in a lot of force because judging by the pressure of the skin and the muscles embedded down into the lungs and also that punctured heart, he definitely had stabbed her real deep to make sure that she was killed unaware and die in an instant. He had the whole blade shoved down to her lung and through her heart. Ouch, that's gotta hurt!"

            "Sure it is," Jonathan said, feeling the steamed fish he just ate going up his throat. "And it did hurt her until she woke up the other brother Peter. Jude gave her theory about him putting a struggle with the perpetrator and…"

            "Oh, Peter! How can I forget about you?" Justin exclaimed, as if this entire autopsy was a sort of fun activity for him. He rushed over to Peter's body, which was also as mangled as his other brother, and went through him with much interest. "Yes, yes, of course. He did put up with a struggle. Look at his slight bruise on his cheek—well, what's left of it, that is. It looks like our psycho tried to beat the lights out of him but it didn't work, so he tried to strangle him."

            "Strangle?" Justin's words distracted him a little from the goriness. He looked at where Justin was pointing and sure enough, there were finger marks on the boy's neck and serious bruising that followed.

            "That's one thing that surprises me, because this guy actually tried to strangle him with one hand," Justin said as he continued pointing certain parts of the finger marks. "Usually when you want to strangle someone to death, you use both hands to apply more pressure and tighten the airway," Justin demonstrated to him with his own hands, "and the marks usually have an overlap or a double set of finger marks on both sides of the neck. But this," Justin pointed at the neck again, "is a one-hand deal. The finger marks were only present at the right side of the neck, which means he was using only his left hand to strangle him."

            "Or to hold him down," Jonathan remembered the huge patch of blood Judith shown at the crime scene where she got her theory on the kid being dragged back to bed. "The murderer was trying to hold the kid down while he/she hacked his brains off."

            "There's no way a normal human can hold a kid down with just one hand," Justin said as he checked his tape recorder to see if there's any tape left. "I mean, he's got to be at least 8 years old, and an 8-year-old still has enough strength to break free from a one-hand grasp. Unless we have a very strong man who plays basketball."

            "You mean the kind like Sakuragi in Slam Dunk where he holds the basketball with one hand? It's possible."

            Both boys turned to Judith who was standing there with her usual file of manga artworks in one hand and eating a chocolate bar with another. Jonathan grimaced; how could she stomach that food in the presence of a threesome of dead mangled bodies? Judith tossed another chocolate bar to Justin who was turning off the tape recorder. He thanked her, unwrapped the chocolate bar and ate it with flourish. Jonathan could have sworn that the coke he just drank was churning in his stomach, ready to be regurgitated. He grabbed Judith's arm and dragged her out of the autopsy room.

            "What? What? What's wrong, Mark David?" Judith asked in surprise.

            "Don't you ever, _ever_ eat in front of a corpse while I'm around!" Jonathan said between clenched teeth. "It's filthy and disgusting and down right…"

            "Interesting?" Judith grinned as she took another bite from the chocolate bar. She just loved to intimidate the ever temper-disordered Jonathan. 

            "Stop acting like Hakkai! You're not Cho Hakkai at all!"

            "Well, we took the Genzomaden Saiyuki personality test together and you saw who I'm like," Judith replied, putting a mock cute face. Before Jonathan could argue, she pointed, "That's right. I'm Cho Hakkai and my attitude suits it, and don't you try denying it. Why don't you just ignore me like the Genjo Sanzo you are?"

            Jonathan let out a long, deep breath before growling, "Alright~! What were you doing at the autopsy room anyway? You're not going to show off another of your manga artworks, are you? We're in the middle of a case here!"

            "I know that!" Judith said, punching his shoulder lightly and grinning all the way. "I just came by to tell you that we've the results of the evidence we've bagged in."

            "And…?"

            "Well, no lead for the knife, 'coz we couldn't find any fingerprints on it. Whoever this guy is or how rushy he was to leave the scene, he didn't go there unprepared. But we have a small lead on the thread you found from the window."

            "What about?" Jonathan asked.

            "I've taken it to the lab to do some microscopic checking and asked Rebecca for help to check on what kind of fabric this thread might come from, since she knows more of these girl things than I do," Judith replied as she handed the plastic evidence bag to Jonathan. "Turned out it's from a kind of black rayon shirt which thieves often wear when they want to burglar a house, and she told me that rayon clothes are so last season and the shirt must have been way old judging by the polarity of the thread. Even burglars wear either synthetic or normal T-shirts to rob nowadays."

            "So we're looking for someone who could be an athlete, especially a basketball player, and has a serious fashion sense deficiency. Hmm…" Jonathan stared at the thread in the bag for a moment before patting Judith on the head, like he used to when he was in college with her. "Good work, Jude. Keep it up, and keep me posted on anything new."

            "Yeah, Mark David, sure. No problem."

            Judith stared at Jonathan as he walked down the corridor and went to the lift. He has left the building to probably check up on the case for further info. She sighed.

            "Some things just don't change."

A/N: Well, now we have another lead to the case. Who's the guilty one? You'll find out soon enough! ^_~ Reviews plz!  


	4. Another Murder At Hand

A/N: Alright, now that we're done with the bodies, let's get cooking with the rest of the case, and the murder that follows~

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "I told you a million times, I don't know who might have a grudge on me!"

            Jonathan and Elaine were at Lionel Han's home trying to question him and find a lead to this case that might solve the murder mystery. The family was wearing black clothes in mourning and they have a small altar with the pictures of the three little kids Jackie, Peter and Suzie in them. The whole place smelt a little of incense, which means that they have just done their prayers to the deceased.

            "Are you sure? Aren't there any friends or even enemies you might have pissed off?" Jonathan asked, his eyes fixing on Lionel whose eyes were red and sodden. It's not always you see a boy cry.

            "I told you, no! N-O, NO! End of story, OK? Aren't you guys supposed to be out there looking for the murderer instead of sitting here interrogating me?" Lionel asked in a frustrated tone.

            "You mind if I smoke?" Elaine asked as she took out one of her Marlboro cigarettes. The Han family shook their heads, but it was evident to her that Jonathan didn't like it. She lit her cigarette and moved somewhere else to smoke to her heart's content. She relished the feeling of having smoke in her lungs; it's not easy being bad when you have over-protective parents and are obliged to put on a good look in front of everyone as the female Mozart. Only when she was out of the family and into the forensic team and hanging out with Judith that she was able to do all that.

            "It's because we need more information of who could've done this crime that we would sit here asking you questions instead of being out there finding him. OK, skip the enemy part. Do you have any friends? Like, as in close friends?" Jonathan tried to change the question a little.

            "Are you suspecting that my friends could be involved?" Lionel asked.

            "No, I just want to know what kind of friends you have," Jonathan replied. "Unless you want me to go to your school and ransack the whole place asking who your friends are. That would be quite a bad image now, wouldn't it, judging by the way you held a great party that night without your parents' knowledge?"

            "Well…" Lionel hesitated before answering, "They're mostly my basketball friends: Cliff Chang, Gary Yap, Nicholas Ho and Jeremy Lee. We are pretty much a cool gang and all, only that Jeremy is more of a geek than a basketball player. Sometimes he doesn't even play with us because he's got a test to study for. That's why he's mostly a reserve than an official player."

            "Can I have their addresses, please?" Jonathan asked as he took out his notebook.

            "Knock yourself out," Lionel replied as he handed him the address book near his cordless phone. "But I have to tell you that they won't be around town until tomorrow. They've all went to Alor Setar yesterday evening to watch Blink 182 live in concert. I couldn't go because…well, you know, the mourning and all."

            "Were they at your party that night?" Elaine asked from her spot. She was beside the huge TV and was checking out the VCD-s in the rack.

            "Yeah, except Jeremy. He said he's got an unfinished project or something. Come to think of it, he never attends any of my parties anymore. Not since we've played that small prank on him when we were having this small celebration at home to celebrate the end of our PMR exams."

            "I see," Elaine replied, not taking her eyes away from the rack of VCD-s.

            "That must be your friends now, isn't it?" Jonathan asked as he pointed at the group photo of the basketball team hanging on the living room. "Mind if I take a look?" 

            The sister got up and took the photo frame down from the wall for Jonathan to see. His eyes ran across the basketball members in the picture. A quite thin guy with glasses caught his eye; he was the only odd one out and had that studious type of look. He pointed at the guy and asked, "This must be Jeremy, right?"

            Lionel looked and shook his head, "No, that's not Jeremy. That's Cliff. Told him to get contact lenses like Jeremy did but he just wouldn't listen. This one is Jeremy."

            Jonathan looked to where he was pointing. At the middle of the team, between Lionel and another guy with thick lips and curly hair was a guy with wild-looking hair and a band across his forehead. He was as tall as Lionel but was far better-looking than the other guys. He had glassy eyes, which proved Lionel's statement about him wearing contact lenses. Lionel then further introduced the thick-lipped guy as Gary and a pretty fat and big guy as Nicholas.

            "That Jeremy guy looks a lot like Kyota from Ryonan, don't you think, Jon? You know, in Slam Dunk?" Elaine's voice suddenly came from behind him, taking him by surprise and ignoring Jonathan's annoyed look at her. She was still smoking her cigarette, and probably might be her second smoke. She had a few VCD-s in her hand and was waving it at Lionel, "You really like horror movies, don't you?"

            "He's practically a horror movie freak," the sister replied. "He and his friends always come over to watch these sickening shows. Sometimes he even invites our Jackie and Peter to watch them, and they would end up having nightmares."

            "Hey, I didn't exactly invite them watch it," Lionel protested. "They wanted to watch it, so I let them."

            "Hmm…Urban Legends, Friday the 13th, H2O, Hannibal," Elaine read the titles of the movie on her hand. "House on Haunting Hill, The Haunting, Sixth Sense…You really have a knack of watching these scare shows, don't you? Who watches these shows with you?"

            "Just my fellow friends Jeremy, Nicholas, Gary and Cliff. No one else. They're the only ones really close to me and would actually have access to all my things. They even spend the night here sometimes."

             "OK…" Jonathan scribbled down something in his notebook before getting up to leave. "Thanks for the cooperation, kids. We'll keep in touch. I assure you we'll catch the criminal as soon as possible."

            Elaine put out her cigarette before following behind Jonathan. As soon as they were out of the house and inside Elaine's Proton Wira, Jonathan suddenly voiced out, "It has to be one of his friends. I have a hunch it could be one of them."

            "Why so?" Elaine asked.

            "Someone as popular as he is could never have any enemies," he replied. "Well, maybe some, but I'm sure they're minor ones, what with his popularity in school and the amount of friends he had for his crash party that night. I've checked his records. He's pretty clean and he's the jock and the hopes of the entire school and he's practically friends with everyone he meets. He may not be an all-rounder but he sure is everyone's favourite."

            "And he also said that he and his friends Cliff, Jeremy, Gary and Nicholas are really close, almost like brothers, I suppose," Elaine said as she started her car. "They do things together and they have access to all his things, even had a slumber party or two at his home. One of them should know about the ins and outs of his house very well to be able to sneak in unnoticed and know about the soundproof room to dare to kill his siblings without hesitation."

            "Exactly," Jonathan replied, snapping his fingers. "And tomorrow, we'll pay them a little visit. Oh, did I mention that I've got the latest scans on the Gundam SEED prototypes from the net last night? Some of them were pretty cool, like the Aile Strike Gundam, Freedom Gundam and the Blitz Gundam…"

            Elaine let out a groan as our head of the crime lab droned on and on about his Gundam SEED all the way towards the crime lab.

                                                                                                *

            Cliff Chang was driving towards a secluded spot away from the stadium with a girl he just picked up from the concert. She looked like a hottie and all and as the horny man he was, he couldn't resist hitting on her. He immediately started tackling on her and ditched the gang secretly before taking the car on a little ride with the girl. He had to ditch them in secret—he was the one driving his father's car and if they knew that he was running off with their only transport, they'd maul him and kick him to Timbuktu. Lucky for him, this girl looked like she was used to this kind of situation and seemed street-smart enough to handle him, or he would've been reported to the cops for sexual assault.

            They were getting to the heat of their 'game' when suddenly Cliff needed to go on a leak. He grumbled to himself—he had quite a weak bladder and when he had to go, he _had_ to go. Smiling sheepishly, he apologized to the girl and snuck off to a dark corner to do his business.

            The girl was in a pretty good mood, so she waited for him. But when his business took too long, she was getting a little annoyed. Has Cliff ditched her or something, just like he ditched his friends? She folded her arms across her chest and huffed in frustration. She had never felt so cheated before. She had a good mind to just drive off the car and let him suffer the wrath of her friends. She gave a mental note that if Cliff doesn't show up in the next 5 minutes, she was definitely going to drive the car away and profit herself a little from it.

            No sooner she thought of that than she heard frantic scraping sounds on the roof of the car. At first she thought maybe it was just the branches of the trees because the car was parked under a tree. But when the scrapings got even more and more frequent, she was beginning to think that something was wrong. There wasn't any wind tonight—she was sure of it—and even if there was wind, it couldn't have let a mere branch scrape the roof of the car continuously. The girl was pretty much petrified that she didn't dare to get out of the car to see what's going on. She just shut her eyes and closed her ears hoping that she could block the sounds away.

            After what seemed like forever, the scrapings finally stopped. The girl tentatively opened her eyes and let down her hands and was relieved to hear the peaceful silence about her. The only thing that still annoyed her was that Cliff still hasn't come back from his 'business-doing'. She got sick of waiting. She got off the car and stomped towards the dark corner and yelled, "Hey, man! Are you going to do it or not? I'm not a sitting duck, you know!"

            When silence replied her, she yelled again, "Fine! If that's the way you want it, then I'm taking your car!"

            As she turned around to face the car, she saw something so gruesome and so horrifying that a blood-curdling scream escaped from her lips almost immediately.

A/N: What did she see? What did she see? Not telling! Reviews plz! 


	5. Hanging On A 'Thread'

A/N: We have another murder! Send in the CSI team, quick! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "Woah! Now that is what I call a human 'lap chong (a Hakka dialect for waxed seasoned pork intestines)'!"

            They are at the crime scene after receiving the call from the police department to come down and check the place. The first thing Judith said when she got off the car and saw Cliff's body hanging from the tree was that, which sent their other member to join the investigation, Rebecca, into peals of laughter.

             Jonathan's eyebrow twitched in annoyance, his cool finally lost after dealing with the food-obsessed CSI agent. He couldn't believe that she could be able to think of food at a time like this, and in front of a corpse at that. "URUSAI! DAMARE! ENOUGH!!!!! Stop talking about food, you demented, greedy, _fat, bakasaru!" he snarled, glaring at Judith, his right hand dropping lower to where he wore his Beretta M92Fs pistol on his left side._

            "Hey, it was only a comment," Judith replied, pretending to look hurt for a second or two before laughing crazily like a maniac and rushing off towards Rebecca who was taking pictures. Besides being an all-star in the Physics of weapons, she has a knack of taking pictures, which would later contribute to the investigation of all the CSI crew.

            "Besides, I'm fatter than her," Elaine remarked, blowing smoke out from her cigarette before putting it out. Obviously our wannabe bad girl had her pumped her lungs once too many of Marlboro smokes. 

            Jonathan looked in disbelief at the obviously smaller-sized Elaine and decided that he'd rather not know what she was talking about. Growling in frustration at the two ridiculous girls he got for co-workers, his phone rang, and he picked it up, yelling "WHAT?!?!?!"

            "I guess that means I should book you some time on the shooting range then," said the quiet voice of Thomas Chung, Jonathan's good friend and SWAT Team Leader. He was used enough to Jonathan's sudden outburst of temper. "Remember, Soul of Ice, Soul of Ice (his codename for 'Remain calm'), and if you shout at me again I'll come up to your floor and kick your ass _again_."

            "Yeah, well, sorry," Jonathan cooled down and apologized. "It's just that I have lunatics for CSI co-workers instead of normal decent people. So what's up?"

            "You're not much of a normal, decent guy yourself anyway. Just be thankful that you have Rebecca, Rachel and Justin as much more sane people in your team," Thomas chuckled. "Anyway, I was going to invite you out to dinner with a few members of the team; the guys missed you."

            "Wonder why," Jonathan muttered, shooting death glares at the girls (who, unfortunately, were immune to such childish things). "I'm at a crime scene under a really gruesome case, just like in Scream. We found a guy hung up from a tree with his guts sticking out of his body. Seriously dead that guy."

           "Oh, you mean like a human 'lap chong'," Thomas replied, chuckling, as Jon fumed silently. "Anyway, Aaron, Leslie, and a few of us were going to go out for dinner, and then we were going to see that new movie, 'Fulltime Killer'. Mainly so that we could make fun at the movie cops' stupidity and so Aaron can complain about how they're showing snipers in a bad light. Well, I'll be going. See you on Saturday at the range?"

            "Yeah. Ten-four," Jonathan responded, terminating the call. He turned around see Rebecca and the girls going about their work, though still giggling about 'lap chong'. He made a personal note to confiscate all chocolate bars from Judith while popping in a blueberry Mentos sweet into his mouth.

            Now that's a total contradiction for someone who didn't like eating in front of a corpse.

            As Jonathan came close to the body, he saw the dark-rimmed glasses that was dangling on his left ear, he recognized the guy as Cliff Chang he remembered seeing in the picture of the basketball team. He was a very unsightly thing to see and definitely not a sight for sore eyes. He was hung upside-down through his legs and his guts were dangling out of his open stomach, the blood and stomach juice dripping out of them and onto the roof of the car. He had his fingers pretty close to the car and there were a few scraping marks on it mixed with his own blood and all that gore, which explained the girl's testimony of the scraping sounds she heard earlier before discovering the body. His eyes were wide open and so was his mouth, probably trying to ask for help, only that his throat was slit. Rebecca moved around taking pictures of the body from every angle and the car.

            "Woah, looks like this guy is seriously disemboweled beyond recognition," Rebecca said in her good-natured way as she took another picture of Cliff's horribly gutted body. "It really reminds me of Jack the Ripper."

            "Did you say Jack the Ripper?" Judith asked as she turned to Rebecca with a surprised look on her face.

            "Yeah, I did. What? Have you got something?"

            "No, no, not yet," Judith replied, turning back to the place she was investigating, which was where the girl said Cliff had went to take his leak. Elaine noticed the sudden change of her humourous attitude and walked towards her, carrying the numbering tags with her.

            "You got something in your mind, I know it," Elaine said as she laid the tags wherever she thought could be relevant evidence or wherever Judith was pointing. "What have you got?"

            "I just can't help thinking that this case has something familiar with it," Judith replied, taking blood samples from the trail of dragged blood on the earth. "Murders during the Hungry Ghost Festival, fictional characters, mauling kids in their rooms and call the brother, hanging bodies and disemboweling them like some sort of ritual…they're just simply all too familiar. I just can't put my finger into it."

            "Do you suspect a copycat on the loose?" Elaine asked as she gathered some samples of urine she found at a small corner of a dense bush.

            "Maybe, maybe not," Judith said. "Maybe I should ask Rachel or Justin, or maybe both. They do have an idea on fictitious characters. I've been on the streets too long that I never had a chance to really sit down and enjoy a great movie or a good book."

            "Go figures," Elaine grinned. "Are you in for a swig or two later after work?"

            "Sure. Top Ten or Carlsberg or Black Dog or just plain cocktail?"

            "Maybe a dose of everything."

            Meanwhile, Rebecca and Jonathan were still checking out the car and the body. Another member from the crime lab has come and loosen the knot that lead to the hanging of Cliff and they all lowered the body slowly onto the ground. As Rebecca did her share of investigating the boy, she wound the loose end of the red ribbon around her neck so that she wouldn't get it dirty or in contact with the body.

            "Have you ever considered taking that ribbon off?" Jonathan asked. From the first day Rebecca was assigned to his lab to work, he had seen her with that ribbon. Nothing could convince her to take it off. To her, it was her life and soul, a promise she swore never to break.

            "Nope, unless I'm taking a bath," Rebecca replied. "I've already promised that I will never take off until the day Cyril and I have spoken our vows at the church altar. So there. Hello, what do we have here? Hey, Jon, I think you should take a look at this."

            Jonathan lowered himself to see where she was pointing at. It was Cliff's slit throat. The cut wasn't too deep, but it was lethal enough if left bleeding for too long. He asked, "What about it? My torchlight is running out of batteries, I can't really see what you're at."

            "Here, use my torchlight," Rebecca said as she handed him her torchlight. "Point it at his throat. Do you see this? This is no cut an ordinary knife would do. The pressure is a bit too strong for an ordinary knife and look, the slit skin has jagged patterns on it."

            "Well, I'll be darned," Jonathan said as he took a closer look at the jagged ends of the slit skin on Cliff's jugular. He recognized that kind of jagged patterns. "You're right. It is no ordinary knife. If I'm not mistaken, this is an army knife. Only used by soldiers of the war."

            "Now why would you want to kill someone using an army knife instead of a regular sharp knife or a penknife, to be kinder?" Rebecca asked herself as she zoomed in the camera to take a picture of that jagged ends.

            "Becka, if you want to kill, you wouldn't be kind now, would you?"

            "Hmm, you're right. I wouldn't. In fact, I'd be extra _evil_! Nya ha ha ha ha ha~!" Rebecca simply just can't get enough out of making a joke in a serious, tense situation.

            "If I have to face the lunacy of you girls one more time, I'm gonna break down," Jonathan groaned.

            "Sounds like you need a woman," Rebecca said, and before Jonathan could protest she poked his chest and said, "I mean it. You need a girl and fast. Hey, Jon, look. Guess our murderer was pretty careful in his disemboweling business. The girl told us that she had kept her eyes and ears closed all the time and waited until the sound stopped, which means she probably didn't see the murderer climbing up to the roof of the car to tear ol' Cliff's guts out."

            "Yet there are no marks that indicated that the murderer climbed up the roof of the car to kill Cliff," Jonathan sadi as he took a look at the roof of the car. "He really is good and seriously doesn't want to get caught. Looks like this case is gonna be slightly tougher than I thought."

            "Oh my…God!!! Cliff?! Cliff!!! CLIFF!!!"

            The CSI team turned around at the sound of the boys screaming in horror and disbelief. Jonathan shone the torchlight at the boys and saw that it was the rest of Lionel's basketball gundam: the thick-lipped Gary, the glassy-eyed Jeremy and the big and fat Nicholas. The other CSI members tried to keep the frantic gundam away from the crime scene. They were all hollering and yelling, demanding to know what had happened to their best friend. Jonathan walked to them.

            "Calm down, boys, calm down. There's nothing to panic about."

            "Are you crazy?!" Gary said in disbelief. "It's Cliff we're talking about!! He's dead! He's hanging at the tree dead!!! Who could've done such a thing?!"

            "We're working on it, boys. And if you don't calm down a little, you'll disrupt our work and I will have to shoot you," Jonathan said in an abnormally calm voice. Judith recognized that kind of voice.

            "Better do as he said," Judith called from her spot. "He means business."

            The boys had no choice but to lean on something so as not to fall weak all over looking at their friend who was on the floor being examined by Rebecca and Judith who had just came back from her evidence-collecting.

            "Well, I can see that you guys must be a great friend of Cliff, and also a great friend to Lionel Han," Jonathan said as he put his hands on his hips. He turned to Gary and pointed, "Yes, I remember you. I saw you leaving the party quite shook up. What are you guys doing here coming to the crime scene?"

            "We came to look for the car. Cliff wasn't with us when the concert ended, so we guessed that he had ditched us again to hang out with some girl," Nicholas replied.

            "He always did that. It gets old. We catch him in the act sometimes, just to suck the fun out of him and punish him for ditching us," Gary said. "He always liked to choose this kind of place to 'do it in' with the girls. We came here to find the car and try to catch him in the act again just for the fun of it."

            "Well, unfortunately your Cliff here has hung out with a girl too many," Jonathan replied. "I believe we'll be meeting each other soon enough. Elaine, would you mind giving these kids a ride back home? I'm sure after seeing this case in the news, their parents might be worried about them."

            "Can I give them the Q zone?" Elaine asked. This was a sort of secret language only these CSI members share—what she meant was that 'Could she question the kids on the way?' Jonathan understood the question.

            "Knock yourself out. Card me out the R sets A.S.A.P," Jonathan replied with a thumbs up. What he meant was 'Send me the results of your questioning A.S.A.P.'

            "Well, I think we ought to send this Cliff boy back for our dear ol' Justin to poke and prod on," Rebecca said as she put away her camera. "I'm pretty much done here."

            "We might need the car too," Judith said. "I have a feeling that there's something important in the car. Get someone to check it thoroughly."

            "Rach and Elaine can do it," Rebecca suggested.

            "Elaine would be OK, but why Rach?" Judith asked, surprised.

            "Just to give her something to do and get her out of those boring books and the office once in a while. It helps for her to do a real case instead of sitting there becoming only our encyclopedia."

            "Good point."

A/N: Well, we have another murder in hand and the murderer is still on the loose. Who do you think killed them all? Figure it out while I'm working on my next chappie. Reviews plz!


	6. Murder Patterns Revealed

A/N: In this chapter, we'll have a little bit of an educational tour, shall we? Come along now. For those who find education boring, please refrain from reading it, or read at your own risk (the risk of falling asleep, that is. He he he~)! Some of the quotes here are taken out of a website, so a disclaimer on that should be included too.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            Justin was with the body of Cliff in the autopsy room, examining it like he did with Lionel Han's siblings. This time, Judith was there to watch too besides our head of the crime lab, Jonathan. At first Jonathan didn't want her around the corpse but after she promised profusely that she wouldn't eat a thing in front of him and the corpse, he reluctantly allowed her to enter the autopsy room.

            "You're right, Jon," Justin said as he looked into the jagged patterns on Cliff's jugular. "It is done by an army knife. The pressure was pretty hard too, judging by the sliced veins and the slightly marked neck bones, the ruined trachea and the voice box. He practically couldn't say a single word without choking in his own blood and having them filling up his lungs. If this disembowelment didn't take place, he could've died just by that slit throat alone."

            "Only that he didn't die by the slit throat, did he?" Jonathan asked.

            "Nope, it was the disembowelment that killed him. The slit wound was much older than the gut wound," Justin said as he pointed from the throat to the guts. "His nails are covered with his own blood as he scraped that roof of the car while the murderer tried to hang him upside-down from the tree. Besides, if he was disemboweled before he was hung up there, you would've found trails of blood mixed together with his gut juice on the ground where he was dragged towards the car and not just only on the roof of the car."

            "That's true," Judith replied as she recalled that there was a long trail of dragged blood on the earth. She had taken it to analysis and it was confirmed that it was Cliff's blood and nothing else. "Could we be looking for someone who is an ex-army or has a family member who was an ex-army?"

            "The latter. I've already have a few young suspects and I'm trying to figure out who could've done it. Well, if the throat slit didn't kill him, the disembowelment would," Jonathan said. "If the disembowelment doesn't kill him too, I don't what else would."

            "High cholesterol, maybe?" Justin suggested jokingly. "'Coz I seem to find some of his dinner here: steak, French fries, potato chips, hot dog, hard-boiled eggs…pretty lot of oil and fat for that, don't you think?" He then turned to Judith with a grin on his face and said, "This food reminds me that I haven't had my dinner. Would you mind passing me a slice of pizza from the box there, Jude?"

            Judith looked at Jonathan with a It's-not-my-fault look on her face as she took out a slice of pizza from the Pizza Hut box and passed it to Justin, stealing a bite of sausage. Jonathan groaned in disgust at Justin took a bite out of the pizza and replaced it back into the box.

            "You guys are so disgusting!!!" Jonathan exclaimed, looking at the chewing Judith and Justin in disbelief and horror. "How could you guys stomach such food in front of a corpse who just had his guts pulled out of his body?! Eww~!!"

            "That is part of doctor training, you know," Justin replied in an as-a-matter-of-fact way. "We are all trained to strengthen our guts by eating in front of a corpse during meals during our junior years. Not much people could handle it though. I remember my first meal in front of a pickled corpse: chicken rice with sunny-side up eggs."

            "Well, I guess that explains that, but what about you?" Jonathan turned to Judith who was licking her fingers off the cheese she got from touching the pizza.

            "Oh, that's easy," Judith replied proudly. "Being on the streets and in the wrong side of the law gives me plenty of time to strengthen my guts. Why, when I was in high school, I actually wolfed down a drumstick while watching pictures of accident victims being squashed flat on their stomachs and their entrails dragged along the road during an awareness campaign. And do you remember the ABC I ate while watching the biology team dissecting a frog during our college open day, or was it a toad?"

            "A toad," Jonathan replied, going blue. "How can I forget?"

            "By the way, guys, the way you told me about the position this Cliff was in when he died was pretty familiar," Justin said, tapping his chin.

            "You too? I also think it's familiar, but I couldn't put my finger in it," Judith replied.

            "Well, if I'm not mistaken, this sounds a lot like the movie Urban Legends where this guy got hung up on the tree by the neck. Of course he wasn't disemboweled like Cliff here. That would be Jack the Ripper's work."

            "Are you telling me that this murderer is actually killing these people by following the pattern of horror movies?" Jonathan asked in disbelief. "Just like the murders in Scream and all?"

            "Well, Scream could be one of them, but judging by the way Cliff was murdered and the way you described the murder of the Han siblings, the murderer is more of the pattern of Urban Legends," Justin replied as he tried to recall the movie he watched. "Urban Legends is a movie about this girl who was caught in a web of murder where the murderer used urban legends to kill her victims. Her friends were killed one by one—first it was her high school classmate who was killed by the murderer in the back seat, then it was her roommate who was killed in the room without her knowledge because she remembered not to turn on the lights and not catch her naked with a guy, and a whole lot more using all kinds of urban legends. In the end it turned out that it was the heroine's best friend who did all the killings because the heroine and her high school classmate have killed her boyfriend using the headlight urban legend."

            "Did the murderer die in the end?"

            "Well, at first it looked like she was dead, but at the end of the movie, she actually survived and was studying in another college talking about urban legends with her new classmates," Justin shrugged. "It's pretty freaky, 'coz she was thrown out of a building and thrown out of the car into a deep lake. There's no way a normal human could survive that."

            "What about murders during ghost festivals? Is there any movie that is connected to people killing during a ghost festival?" Judith asked.

            "As a matter of fact, there is one movie called 'H2O: Halloween 20 Years Later'. It's about this mass murderer who escaped from the mental asylum and walks around wearing a mask like this other movie's murderer Jason in 'Friday the 13th' looking for his sister so that he could kill her. She was an unfinished job because he had killed everyone in the family when he was 5 or 6 years old except the sister, whom he missed out. And the funny thing is the psychopath—Mike Myers is his name—came to kill her during Halloween. When he killed his family, it was on a Halloween night, so I guess it was some sort of a ritual for him."

            "And this whole month of August is the Hungry Ghost Festival, a Chinese version of Halloween!" Judith exclaimed. "There's another movie our copycat has been doing! He's following the movie patterns of Urban Legends and H2O!"

            "Woah, woah, woah, wait a cotton-pickin' minute here!" Jonathan tried to get all this info in his head. "Let me get this straight, Jude. You're trying to tell me that we're looking for a murderer who is a copycat _and_ a movie buff?"

            "That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you," Judith said as she stole another sausage from Justin's pizza and dashed out of the autopsy room. Jonathan was surprised at her sudden reaction. He chased after her.

            "Hey, where are you going?"

            "To meet our Human Library," Judith replied, quickening her pace and hoping that Rachel hasn't gone to check out the car with Elaine yet.

                                                                                                *

            "You want me to check on urban legends?"

            Rachel was in her office room looking over the pictures taken by Rebecca earlier, lucky for Judith, and she was quite surprised to know that someone was asking her about something that was not connected to forensics.

            "Yeah, I wanna know if there are any famous urban legends that are still existing till today," Judith said, looking quite breathless. Jonathan was in the office too, wanting to see what bright ideas have spawned in his food-obsessed, suicidal co-worker. 

            "Well, I had this book for light reading," Rachel replied as she took out a book as thick as the latest version of the Oxford dictionary and as big as an encyclopedia and plopped onto the table. "Maybe there is something for you to see about."

            "You call that 'light'?" Jonathan wrinkled his nose at the book. 'Light reading' is definitely an understatement.

            Rachel ignored his comment. She had always loved to read, regardless the thickness of the book. She flipped a few pages of the book entitled 'Mysterious Mysteries' and looked for the page on 'Urban Legends'. She smiled, signifying that she had found it. She ran her fingers through the page and read it out loud:

            "An urban legend is where a story which was claimed to be true is passed down from one person to another and as the more people the story was passed down, the more bigger the story goes and the more extravagant the details of the story is. For example, a story about an elderly woman choking on a bagel when passed down from one person to another might result to a story where the elderly woman was choking because there was a finger baked together with the bagel by the baker who lost it while cutting the dough' or something like that."

            "What about urban legends? Are there any stories in there that might be considered an urban legend?" Judith asked as she flipped through the pages herself.

            "There's a lot I must say, but here's a few that's pretty good," Rachel ran her finger through the book and read it out loud, "'A young lady is alone in her apartment. She goes to bed with her dog on the floor beside her. In the middle of the night, she is woken up by a strange sound. She is alarmed, but reaches down to the dog which licked her hand. She was reassured and went back to bed. In the morning she found her dog hung in the shower and writings in blood on the wall saying _Humans can lick too_.'

            "'A woman was driving home from visiting her friend and noticed that a car was following her all the way. Try as she might, she couldn't lose him. When she reached home, she honked for her husband and he came out to see what the matter was. When he demanded the man to tell him why he was following his wife, he said that he noticed a man's head bob down in her back seat, and when the husband checked the back seat, he saw a deranged man sitting on the floor of the car with a knife in his hand.'

            "'Two roommates were staying back at school during the holidays. One went out on a date and the other one hit the hay before she came back. Later that night she was awakened by a gurgling and scratching sound outside the hallway door. Frightened, she locked the door and hid under the covers until morning. When she finally opened the door and ventured outside, she found the body of her roommate, her throat slit and bleeding to death in the hallway while clawing at the door.'"

            "Oh, here's another one," Judith said as she took charge of the reading. "'A male flight attendant was stopping over Japan and went to a local bar where he was greeted warmly by a couple and drank sake and chit-chatted. The next morning, he woke up and found himself in a bath tub full of ice and aches in his stomach. He managed to climb out of the tub and called the police, telling him everything he remembered about the couple. The police told him to go back to the tub and stay there until the ambulance arrived; both of his kidneys were removed.' Ouch! That's gotta hurt!"

            "This one is about our two murders," Jonathan said as he pointed at two urban legends in a page. "This one said that the babysitter received a laughing phone call after tucking the children to sleep a few minutes later. 'The call repeated a few times and she decided to ask the police to trace the call. After the laughing came again, she hung up and the police called her immediately to tell her to get out of the house quickly—the calls were coming from the upstairs extension, where the murderer already murdered the children', pretty much like Lionel's case. And this one is on Cliff's murder—'A boy tried to trick a girl into "making out" with him but failed, so he sent the angry girl home instead. When the car ran out of gas, he came out of the car and walked towards the nearest gas station. She waited for nearly 2 hours but he didn't come, and there were scratching sounds on the roof of the car. When she came out of the car to break off the 'branch', she found the boy hanging upside-down with his throat slit.' OK, that's freaky."

            "Here's one urban legend that says one of a juvenile gang's traditions was to drive with their headlights off and kill the first person to signal their headlights at them to warn them," Rachel said. "And there's another where to be a gang member they must hide under the car and wait until the owner of the car arrives before slashing their ankles and stealing a shoe. The things teenagers would do to feel belonged." 

            "This is serious," Jonathan said. "We have a copycat guy who is out there killing people and trying to make it look like he was a star of some horror movie. I've heard about TV influence, but this is too much!"

            "_Way_ too much. It's like this guy is trying to symbolize something to his or her victims," Judith said.

            "He. It's a 'he'," Jonathan corrected.

            "How'd you know it's a 'he'?" Rachel asked as she closed her book.

            "I told Jude I got a lead in this case, and I sure have a hunch who's the murderer," Jonathan said. "Now who's in for the latest Kreko? Another new episode on Genzomaden Saiyuki: Reload is up!"

            Judith and Rachel looked at each other tiredly. They should've seen this coming.

A/N: Well, well, well. Now we have a hunch on how he kills his victims, why don't we start finding the murder weapon then? Reviews plz!  


	7. Every Mystery Has A Clue

A/N: Hello, everybody~! So how's life? Good? Can we get on with the story then? Alright, knock yourself out!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            Rachel and Elaine are walking around the car they were supposed to inspect: Cliff's car. It has been a while since Rachel had been on a decent investigation. All she did was sit around in the office room checking on pictures taken, filing reports, providing book information to her co-workers, sketching patterns of crime scenes and how it took place on huge pieces of paper, with a little help from Rebecca, that is and also doing things not even an office boy could stand doing. She was mostly inside, not outside and this was one of those days when the co-worker had to find for her something to do to get her out of the office and into the fresh air outside.

            Not that inspecting a stinky Perodua Rusa that was stained with blood and gut juice on the roof was much of a fresh air job, but it's better than nothing.

            "I've heard that you've given the kids the Q zone while you were sending them home last night," Rachel said while she dusted the bonnet of the car for any footprints or fingerprints.

            "Yeah, I did," Elaine replied while checking inside the boot of the car, which was not much.

            "So what did they have to say?"

            "Well, I've did quite a Q zone on them. All of them said that they were together throughout the whole concert, except Jeremy who went off to take a leak and Gary who wanted to buy some of those neon lights for the guys. They all lost track of time of how long they've been away."

            "So you have two suspects that might have taken off to kill that Cliff guy," Rachel said as she took a look on the still blood-stained car roof.

            "They're all suspects here, Rach," Elaine said while climbing into the Perodua to check on the floors of the car. "Could be Gary, could be Jeremy, or could be even Nicholas who might have sneaked off to do the killing while his gang went off to do their business. We're still a few evidences short here."

            "What else have you got from your Q zone?"

            "Well, I asked them about their relationship with Lionel, just as Jon and I planned to do, and as expected, they were like peas in a pod. They ate together, they played basketball together, they hang out together, they watch horror movies together and they even slept together when they're having their boy slumber parties. They are practically inseparable. Except Jeremy, that is. Ever since that prank during the end of PMR celebration, he spent a considerable less time with them."

            "Prank? What prank?" Rachel asked from her front seat.

            "Turned out that our Jeremy here had a phobia for the dark. The guys knew about it and decided to give him a little scare or some sort. They tricked Jeremy into going inside Lionel's storeroom and they locked him in, leaving him there in the dark and forgot about him. It was only when they have done celebrating that they remembered he was still in the storeroom. He was practically in there for hours and when they took him out, he suffered a minor shock. He never went to any of his parties since."

            "Now that's one bad way of pulling someone's leg," Rachel replied. "Do you think that could be his motive to kill his friends, that Jeremy?"

            "We do have a suspicion that he would be the murderer," Elaine replied. "But we can't go jumping into conclusions yet. It's not CSI professional-like. Besides, the gang was not the only one who likes to take him for a dummy."

            "Who else would want to pick on him?"

            "Almost everyone in the basketball team. Like Lionel said, he was more of a geek than a true basketball player, 'coz he studies more than he plays. He's always a reserve, and you know what usually happens to reserves."

            "Tell me about it," Rachel snorted as she remembered her high school years of being a bookworm of the century than being the jock of the year. "I'm pretty much clean here. Just a few CDs and cassettes and a whole lot of jock junk in here. He even has condoms in here just in case. And I mean 'just in case'; he had it written on the wrapper. What have you got?"

            "Goodness!" Elaine groaned. "Did he actually write that?? Well, I'm clean here too. There's nothing in the boot but a basketball, a pair of basketball shoes, some dumbbells, an empty water bottle and smelly old socks and also some Playboy magazines. The things kids stash in their cars these days!"

            "While you were still looking for the suspects, we have a head-start on how the victims were killed," Rachel said.

            "You do? How?"

            "Well, Jude had a hunch on urban legends and…" Rachel told Elaine everything about their find from the book and also her theory on the murderer using horror movies to kill people. Elaine lit up at that theory.

            "Did you say murder through horror movies?"

            "Yeah, I did. Why?"

            "That confirms my suspicion on the suspects, that's all," Elaine said, remembering the horror movie VCD-s in Lionel's home. She stole a look at the ever studious Rachel and asked, "Err, Rach. I was wondering…since you're so smart and studious and more into books than the real life case itself, why don't you become an English professor instead? I see you got potential, you know."

            "I did think of taking that job," Rachel replied as she looked at the roof of the car to see if she had missed out anything. "But I didn't think it was worth it anymore."

            "Why?" Elaine was surprised. "You got the smarts and you got the look. You are so suitable to be professor!"

            "Hmm…That was what my parents said as far as I could remember. It was a pretty tough life back then. I love to study, but all that interest and knowledge has gone down to sheer competition. I study for fun, not for competition. I study for interest, not for survival of the fittest. But throughout my life, it's just study to be the best, study to be No.1, study to be outstanding…" Rachel let out a sigh before continuing, "I didn't study just to get into the best primary school, the best high school, the best college and the best university and end up in the best work place having the best career. That is too predictable. I study to enjoy the knowledge and enjoy life, no matter how unpredictable it might be."

            "So you chose forensics?" Elaine concluded the discussion. Rachel nodded.

            "At least it's pretty unpredictable. You can always try to guess who the real murderer is but you always get unexpected results for it."

            "I don't get it…" Elaine looked around the car, befuddled. "What does Jude means by having some clue in the car?"

            "Jude asked for this car to be inspected?" Rachel looked at the car in disbelief. "There's nothing here to bag except all these masculine junk! There's no footprints, no fingerprints, no strands of hair, no fiber from clothing, no nothing! Her and her so-called sixth sense is always playing games with her."

            "And to think that she usually go under cars and stealing away mechanical parts—" Elaine stopped abruptly as she realized what Judith wanted her to check. She immediately went on her back and wriggled her way underneath the car. Judith has taught her before how to look under cars and see which mechanical parts are still working or not and how much it could worth in the market to be worth stealing. She ran her hands inside the compartments and soon found herself touching something cold. Slowly, with her nimble fingers, she pulled the thing she just touched which was crammed into the gap between the exhaust pipe and the frame of the car and marveled at the thing she had just found.

            "Jude, I seriously owe you a glass of Martini."

                                                                                                *

            Jonathan was at the shooting range with his old friend Thomas as promised. They greeted each other and stood in their own compartments, waiting for the targets to be lowered. Thomas took out his gun and turned his head towards his old friend, asking, "So, how did life in the crime lab go?"

            "Not too good," Jonathan replied. "I'm still surrounded by idiots and maniacs. And I got this one from one of those maniacs."

            Thomas looked at the plastic bag that was handed to him. It was an army knife, with a jagged blade stained with blood and a little bit of black oily stuff on it. He took and looked closely at it, then asked, "Where did you get this knife? I haven't seen this knife since my scouting days."

            "Jude said that she had a hunch that the murder weapon might be hidden in the car, so we had Elaine and Rachel had the car inspected. Elaine found this knife under the car wedged between the exhaust pipe and the car frame. That lil' ol' bakasaru was actually right. I figured that the murderer could be having a family member who was an ex-army and…"

            "Woah, woah, wait, Jon," Thomas stopped his rambling a moment. "Have you forgotten the safety and standard procedure? The army and the government would never allow you to bring home any weapon after you've done your services in the war. It's simply not done. Unless you're a cop, which is what you are, or you're a licensed buyer, you're not supposed to have a weapon at home at all. Besides, see this?" Thomas pointed at a tiny symbol on the knife just near the handle, "That's a company trademark. It's just a typical scout knife."

            "Darn! I'm getting a little weak on this guessing thing," Jonathan sighed and put the plastic bag away before loading his gun. "I should've noticed that trademark. It's just so small."

            "You never miss out anything as small as that. Seems like you've lost your focus due to that 'bakasaru' of yours."

            Jonathan glared grudgingly at Thomas and put on his ear protection before he started firing at the target board. He shot all the bullets with such gusto that he had finished them before Thomas got to shoot his third bullet. As the target board came closer, there were a couple of shots that strayed to the shoulder of the target, but most of them were hit right at the middle and right on the bull's eye. Thomas looked at it in revered admiration.

            "Nice shot, Jon. Just like old times."

            "Unlike you, I never lose my focus," Jonathan replied before reloading for another round.

A/N: Now we have the murder weapon. So who dunnit? I dunno. You gotta keep reading the fic! Reviews plz! 


	8. Interrogation Of Suspects

A/N: Now let's do a little bit of interrogation to some of our suspects, shall we?

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            Jeremy was seated in front of Jonathan and Rachel looking confused. He was barely awake that morning when his mother told him that Jonathan and Rachel has come to arrest him for suspected murder, and he was dragged to the crime lab without even having a chance to eat the waffles his mother made for breakfast. Inside the air-conditioned room, the atmosphere was tense.

            "Hey, what exactly am I doing here, officer?" Jeremy asked as he looked around him. "If you're accusing me of murder, I think you got the wrong guy."

            "Oh? Are you sure?" Jonathan asked. "Evidence doesn't lie like humans do, you know?"

            So saying, he slid the plastic bag that contained the army knife in front of Jeremy and a picture of Cliff's body in front of him. Jeremy let out a moan of disgust and horror at upon seeing the picture of his dead friend and looked away, unable to bear the sight of it. Rachel took the picture away but the knife remained.

            "Now tell me, Jeremy," Jonathan started his questioning. "Where were you exactly during the death of your friend Cliff Chang? Were you really in the toilet taking a leak like you claimed to be at when my co-worker questioned you?"

            "I've told your co-worker, I went to the toilet in the middle of the concert. I only realized that Cliff has ditched us after the concert! I didn't kill Cliff! He's my best friend, how could I kill him?"

            "Jeremy, is this your army knife?" Rachel asked as she pointed at the knife in the basket.

            "So what if it is?" Jeremy replied.

            "Yes or no, Jeremy. Is that your knife?" Jonathan asked.

            "Yes, that's my knife. How did that get here?"

            "How would you say that this is your knife?"

            "See this little marker highlighted there?" Jeremy said as he pointed at the knife handle. Sure enough, there was a diamond-shaped sign on the handle. It looked pretty old, but it was still there alright. "This is how I know that this knife is mine. I had to keep track of my own knife because there had been a lot of theft in my club. Oh, my club is…"

            "We know," Jonathan said. "I've checked your records. You are pretty much a studious person that a jock. You entered the Chess Club, the Literature Club and besides being in the basketball team, you're also the only one among your gundam to be a member of the Scouts Club. What are you, a Brownie?"

            "Somewhat," Jeremy replied. "How did my knife get here? I've been looking for it everywhere."

            "That's what we like to ask you, sonny boy. We found it under the Perodua Rusa which belonged to your friend Cliff. Now how did it get there? You tell me, Jeremy."

            "What?! Are you trying to tell me that _I _killed Cliff? That's ridiculous! I lost that knife the day before the concert and I just simply can't find it. And now it so happened to turn out in Cliff's car and you're suddenly accusing me of killing him?! I can sue you for false accusation! My uncle's a lawyer and he'll sue the socks off you!" Jeremy exclaimed in disbelief and anger, well a timid sort of anger, that is.

            "Yes, yes, well, I'm sure he will," Jonathan replied nonchalantly as his hand reached dangerously towards the gun hidden in his coat. "But I bet I'm going to win the case when the jury finds out that you killed Cliff out of revenge, you know, the prank they played on you during the end of PMR celebration."

            "Wha…?" Jeremy's eyes widened as he seemed to remember that fateful day. He looked sideways awkwardly, "That…That was a long time ago…"

            "Really? But not long enough to suppress the hate inside you, does it?" Jonathan asked, satisfied to see that he had caught Jeremy's sensitive spot. "You hate them pulling the prank on you so much that you are willing to kill them for revenge, right? That'll show them for leaving you in that dark storeroom for hours."

            "This is crazy! I wouldn't kill anyone just because of a measly prank! We were young, and I don't hold grudges like some people do!" Jeremy exclaimed. "And even if I did kill anyone, I wouldn't be stupid enough to hide something so conspicuous like my own knife! And like you said, I'm afraid of the dark and that place is pretty dark. I wouldn't go out there to kill him even if my life depends on it."

            "Then where _were_ you really?" Rachel folded her arms across her chest. "I find it hard to believe that you have just left the place to take a leak. Judging by the ticket of your concert I got from my co-worker, your seats are quite far away, leaving you plenty of time to get out of there, commit the murder and squeeze through the crowd to come back to your seats."

            "Like I said, I went to the toilet. If you don't believe me, you can call my old primary classmate Yong Chung Wee; we came across each other in the toilet and talked for a while before we left to find our seat. And if you still don't believe me," Jeremy banged his palm on the table, just to make his timid self look tough, "I'll be seeing you in court."

                                                                                                *

            "Huh? Me? Murder? You gotta be shitting me!"

            It was Gary being questioned at another room by Judith and Elaine and, as our CSI members expected, he went into a state of denial. Judith leaned towards Gary and said, "Are you sure? I've heard from your past that you were pretty cool in handling cars and you used to take a part-time job at your granduncle's car repairs shop. Someone as smart as you could've easily know where to hide a murder weapon in the last place no one would even think of looking—right under the car at a very specific inconspicuous spot like the exhaust pipe."

            "So what if I knew the ins and outs of a car?" Gary said. "That doesn't mean I'm a murderer!"

            "Oh? But from what I heard, you have paid a visit to Jeremy's house the day before the concert to borrow his homework because you didn't finish yours," Elaine said as she lit a cigarette and took a whiff of it. "He had come back from his scouting trip but hadn't exactly had the time to put away all his scouting equipment and your busybody attitude ran through all his scouting stuff. You could've swiped away his army knife without him looking. After all, we did find the murder weapon under the car and it's evident that the army knife belonged to Jeremy."

            "Besides," Judith continued as she took the cigarette from Elaine's mouth and took a whiff of it herself, "you told my friend here that you've ran off to buy neon lights for the gang, and the only way to get those neon lights was to go outside. What do you say to that?"

            "Look, there were so many people who might have seen me buying the neon lights," Gary said. "And the neon light seller was an old pal of mine. He'll tell you that I've bought the lights from him. Besides, you got no prints on the knife that shows that it was me, didn't you? And you got no prints on the car that has my name on it and no one saw me going to the spot where Cliff was making out. I only realized he was gone after the concert. If I have bought the lights before I killed Cliff, someone would've noticed me like a human neon walking with shining neon lights in my pockets and if I bought the lights after I killed Cliff, anyone would've seen me with blood all over my clothes. Now isn't that a silly thing for me to do?"

            "You were carrying a backpack with you," Elaine pointed out. "Your friends saw you leaving the concert and coming back with the backpack all the time. You told me when I was sending you guys home that you used it to carry food supplies. You could've hidden something else in there, something that is a non-food item."

            "Maybe I was a little overprotective about my bag," Gary waved her accusation away. "Who wouldn't if it is the newest backpack in the century and also with only 1000 items sold worldwide? You would be protective about it too! Besides I've opened the backpack for you to see, haven't I? It's pretty much half-empty of its food."

            "You're good," Judith complemented, smirking as she folded her arms across her chest. "Considering the fact that you have been doing quite a time in the teenage correctional institute for mugging a shopkeeper and attempt to stab him so that he wouldn't have a chance to call the police."

            "Hey, that was a long time ago and I don't appreciate you bringing it up!" Gary growled, looking offended. "I've did my time and it wasn't easy for me to start anew here! Besides, mystery movies have always been my second love. I watch it all the time. Now if you'll excuse me, I got a date with my girlfriend Luciana in about 10 minutes…"

            "Woah, wait!" Elaine stopped him short. "Did you say your girlfriend is Luciana Lo, the daughter of one of the most influential female politician and a child prodigy in music?"  

            "Yeah. She's been pretty cool in her violin and piano and all, and filthy rich too," Gary replied proudly. "It's not easy for me to tackle her and if she ever finds out I've been in the institution and here being questioned by you cops, everything will down into the drains! I've already been embarrassed enough for being confiscated of the knife I brought for ERT class in front of her."

            "You're in ERT? I thought you're in Form 4 and KH isn't supposed to be in your subject anymore," Judith lit up.

            "Yeah, well, in our school, no matter what grade are you in, KH is still part of the syllabus. And I took ERT just to be with Luciana. Lionel borrowed me a knife because we're required to bring our own knife for that day and I don't have one—my family doesn't cook; we just eat microwave-heated food or fast food. So I was being a show-off, but the teacher didn't have to confiscate it."

            "Tough school, tough life. It gets old," Judith muttered.

            "So can I go now?"

                                                                                                *

            At another room, Rebecca and Justin were interrogating the fat and jolly Nicholas. Justin had not much work to do in his coroner business, so he'd like to try out the interrogation. So far, among the three people being questioned, Nicholas looked the most relaxed. It was as if none of this really bothered him.

            "You look awfully jolly for some one who just lost his best friend in a gruesome murder," Justin eyed at him suspiciously.

            "Oh, don't get me wrong, officer," Nicholas said. "I'm feeling very bad about all this, really, I do. But the problem is I was brought up to look at the bright side of life by my parents. So whenever something bad happens, I always keep a good mind in my head that at least it didn't happen to me."

            "Of course it didn't happen to you, and you're glad of that," Rebecca said. "That's because you're the one who committed the murder. Murders, if you include Lionel's brothers and sister."

            "Me? Murder my friends? Now that's simply impossible," Nicholas laughed. "Why would I want to kill my friend? I have nothing against him, lest have anything against Lionel's siblings. Or even Cliff for that matter."

            "Gee, I'm not so sure," Rebecca said in a mock tone. "Maybe you can tell us, judging by the far away seat you and your friends got from the concert and enough time to sneak off to disembowel Cliff and come back just in time to meet your friends who came back from the toilet and from neon light-shopping respectively."

            "Look, all I can say is that I have nothing against them or have a grudge on anyone of them and I wouldn't get so cracked up to kill them even if I _do _have a grudge on them. Like I said, I see things on the bright side. Even if they did do me wrong, I would always believe that they will get what they deserve and that it would hurt them more than it would hurt me later. Besides, even if I want to kill them, I couldn't. Look at me," Nicholas held out his hands and showed his large body to them. "I'm like a sumo player! I stand out like a sore thumb! The only reason that the coach chose me to be part of the basketball team is because I serve as the best human wall to block the opponents. I would've left evidence everywhere!"

            "You got a point there," Justin said. "The pressure on those wounds on the victims looked like they've done by someone who is of a medium-sized person trying to force it in."

            "Anyway, if they ever have anything against me," Nicholas continued, "I know just the thing to counter them—I know loads of their secrets. Well, majority of it were Jeremy, Gary and Cliff, that is."

            "What secrets? Well, that is, if you don't mind telling me," Rebecca asked, loving a gossip or two.

            "Well, don't tell anyone, will you?" Nicholas said as he brought himself closer towards the two CSI officers. "We swore never to tell a soul and all. Our Cliff here, well, you officers know he had a habit of picking up girls just like he did that night. Like your boss said, he had been hanging with a girl too many, 'coz there's once he knocked up a girl so hard, he got her pregnant. Phew! I gotta tell you, that girl was so frustrated that she really took the liberty of finding his whereabouts and almost caused a riot. If it weren't for Cliff having his own bank account and stored enough bucks for himself, his parents would've found out about that and he wouldn't have the chance to persuade her to get rid of the baby."

            "Cliff paid the girl to abort the baby? That's too cruel!" Justin exclaimed, speaking for Rebecca who also had the same idea herself.

            "The girl was only too happy to do it. She came from a very strict family and keeping the baby was not an option," Nicholas said nonchalantly. "Jeremy, on the other hand, besides having a serious fear of the dark, was always the victim of almost everyone in the basketball team."

            "I'm sure you guys know it already," Rebecca noted.

            "Oh, we know. But Lionel doesn't know that. He only knows about Gary's secret and Cliff's. He also doesn't even know that Jeremy was actually a part-time night tuition teacher and had helped his siblings with their studies, and he doesn't know that they were giving him a hard time during lessons. They practically treat him like crap. That's Jeremy's dark secret."

            "How do you know all this?"

            "He doesn't talk much about it, that Jeremy," Nicholas shrugged. "Lionel's siblings told me about it in one of our sleepovers at Lionel's house 'coz they always like to convey things to the big, fat jolly guy. And about that basketball team bullying thing, well, let's just say that after the prank, we found it easier for us to pick on Jeremy, so we're sort of into it with the rest of the team."

            "He's your best friend! How could you do this to him? That's not fair!" It was Rebecca's turn to exclaim.

            "Hey, like I said, always look on the bright side. He's getting it, not me. If he dares to even peep about it, we'll have to expose that dark secret to Lionel."

            "Why didn't he want Lionel to know about this?" Justin asked.

            "Oh, some crap about not wanting to break up the friendship or something. I kinda think that Lionel favours Jeremy more than us, and that's not too good for someone who had sworn in the beginning of high school that we'll be equal in friendship forever. He was afraid that he would ruin our relationship if he ever knew that we've been bullying the geek, so."

            "You said Gary also had a secret. What is it?" Justin asked, and Nicholas told him immediately about Gary being in the correctional institute for stealing and attempted murder on the shopkeeper. Rebecca rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

            "What about Lionel? Doesn't he have a secret or something?"

            "Only that he's a slave for fashion and wouldn't miss any kind of newest trend or something. Not that anyone in the whole school doesn't know about it," Nicholas waved his hands sarcastically.

            "And what's your dark secret?" Justin asked, bringing him back to reality. He could see that the jolly Nicholas immediately slowed down and was looking pretty nervous. Justin asked again in a different way, "What's your dark secret, Nicholas? You've told everything to us about your friends, why can't you tell us yours?"

            Hesitantly, Nicholas leaned even closer to the officers and, with a lower voice, he whispered his secret to them. After he finished, Justin was the first to react.

            "What were you thinking?? You could've gotten someone killed!"

            "Hey, I was a kid! How was I supposed to know how it works?! My dad could but I had to find out about it after my brain was capable enough to understand it!" Nicholas said fearfully.

            "Now that's something we've never expect," Rebecca muttered, turning off the tape recorder that was on the table recording their interrogation session all this while.

A/N: So who do you think did it? Hope you could figure it out right now and review me, plz! Oh, for the record, ERT means Ekonomi Rumah Tangga (Home Economics) and KH means Kemahiran Hidup (Living Skills). In this Living Skills subject, there's ERT and there's also KMT (I forgot the Malay term for it) which has something to do with electronic handling and carpentry. 


	9. The Answer To A Riddle

A/N: OK~! So we don't have much lead to our suspects yet. But our CSI member will continue to persevere! Ganbatte! Sorry for the delay though. Writer's block!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "I suggest we give them protective custody."

            "No, I suggest not!"

            After the long hours of interrogation and alibi confirmation, the remaining survivors of Lionel's friends Gary, Jeremy and Nicholas were allowed to go home. The CSI team was in the recreational room discussing about the option of giving them protective custody. Rachel and Rebecca were for the motion and Judith and Elaine were against the motion. Justin was left in the background trying to pacify both sides. Only Jonathan was seated quietly at one end of the table listening to both sides bickering at each other.

            "You gotta be crazy to let those kids go under protective custody!" Judith argued. "They are all suspects and we cannot just simply let them be reinstated to other homes. What if one of them decides to strike again and we have no idea who the target is next? We're risking a life here!"

            "Girls, there's no need to fight…" Justin tried to calm the girls down.

            "Well, if we don't separate them and put them under protective custody, they might all end up being dead!" Rachel rebutted. "Our main priority is to protect the person that might be in danger of being the next target!"

            "You can talk it out in a peaceful way…"

            "But they are suspects, not next targets! At least I don't believe they're so!" Elaine argued.

            "There's always some truth in everything…"

            "Well, what makes you think that they won't be the next target? You tell me!" Rebecca said.

            "Come on, you girls are friends…"

            "SHUT UP, JUSTIN!!!" the girls yelled in unison at Justin who had been butting in their bickering since just now. Justin shrank away and out of the recreational room, quickening his pace towards the autopsy room. The girls glared venomously at Justin until he was completely out of sight before they continued on with their 'debate'. Jonathan sighed at upon seeing this calamity and cleared his throat to get their attention.

            "Girls, girls, girls, we are not going to go anywhere if we continue to argue like this," Jonathan said as soon as he was sure that he had everyone's attention. "There are humans' lives at stake here and we're not going to solve it just by bickering about protective custody."

            "Then what do you suggest we do, _boss_?" Elaine said sarcastically. "Are we in or out with this protective custody business? 'Coz we got a psycho criminal out there to bust."

            "Well, Rach, Becka," Jonathan turned to the girls who were for the motion, "I agree that the remaining friends of Lionel could be in danger and should be protected and all," then turned to the girls against the motion, "but you, Jude and Elaine, have a point too, that they are all our suspects. Besides I, for one, think that it's not only them being in danger of another murder, but the rest of the basketball team as well, judging by the interrogation and the statement from Nicholas. We can't put all the team members under protective custody, and we sure cannot afford relocating our suspects and risk the other people too."

            "And your point is?" Judith asked with her hands on her hips.

            "The point is," Jonathan gave her an authoritative look, "we'll keep on a lookout. We'll put the protective custody on hold for a while and see what happens. We'll request the department to deploy some men to watch over the suspects'/victims' places and see if there is anything suspicious going on before we decide on the custody thing. We don't want to do anything rash in these circumstances, got it?"

            "Fine, whatever," the girls, after staring at the head of the CSI skeptically, finally came to a reluctant agreement before they dispersed to do their other investigation on the case. Rebecca stayed behind for a moment to gather the mugs they have been drinking. She has a tendency for household cleanliness and she rarely let others do the work—not even the janitor who comes to clean the offices.

            "You're doing this for Jude, aren't you?" Rebecca suddenly asked.

            "What?" Jonathan turned to her with a surprised look on his face.

            "Come on now, Jon, don't play games with me. I know a person who is still sore about the past when I see one. Now, you're doing this for Jude, aren't you? You yourself think that those kids should get protective custody, don't you? I know your mind is with us, but you're trying to make Jude feel happy after the time in college…"

            "Whatever my decision is, it has nothing to do with personal issues," Jonathan replied as he glared venomously at Rebecca. "I'm the head of the crime lab and I call the shots, and I say we put the protective custody thing on hold for a while until the situation says otherwise."

            Rebecca stared back at Jonathan long and hard before she finally let out a sigh and shrugged, "OK, Jon. Like you said, you're the boss. You call the shots."

            "Becka, what do you know about the backpack Gary brought to the concert that night?" Jonathan suddenly asked her after a momentary silence. Rebecca was about to leave the room when he asked that question.

            "Only that it is the limited edition, most exclusive backpack of the century which has become the latest teen craze in the world!" Rebecca said enthusiastically. "I tell you, that backpack is absolutely fantastic and it is the latest creation by Polo Sports. The design and sewing and the textile to make this backpack is simply out of this world. Only 1000 items sold worldwide! My boyfriend was lucky to buy it in Vancouver and he got it just for me!"

            "Do you have it with you?"

            "Yes, of course," Rebecca replied, then noticed the look on Jonathan's face before she continued, "I reckon you want me to bring it to you so that you can have a look-see?"

            "Absolutely."

            A few minutes later, Rebecca came back into the recreational room with a backpack held in her hand. She handed it to Jonathan and gave him a don't-ruin-it warning look. Jonathan nodded and inspected the backpack. It was a rich canvas colour with a few dark brown here and there, especially on the straps and on the bottom of the backpack. He opened the backpack and took a look inside. He could see some of Rebecca's personal things in there with some files and a whole lot of paper. 

            "Well, I can see that it looks more or less a normal backpack," Jonathan said as he finished inspecting the backpack and handed it to Rebecca. "Nothing much special in here."

            "Wait," Rebecca said as she emptied her backpack of its contents. "This is the cool part."

            As Jonathan watched, she reached down towards the bottom of her backpack and pulled something. Jonathan thought he heard a sound of a zip opening and peered into the backpack. Rebecca beamed as she showed him the bottom of the backpack opened to reveal more empty space in it. Jonathan looked back at Rebecca questioningly.

            "I didn't know that there's extra space in the bottom of this backpack."

            "Ah, now that's the beauty of it," Rebecca said as she demonstrated the way she slipped the excess opening flap into an invisible pouch on the back of the backpack. "You see, the designers made the back of the backpack a wee bit thicker so that they can fit the pouch in to keep this excess flap, and the colour makes the pouch invisible so that those who are very appearance-conscious won't have to worry about the ugly pouch protruding and stuff. In fact, the design made it not protruding. And the wonderful thing is, the sewing of this extra space of the backpack is done so perfectly and so professionally from the outside that you wouldn't even notice that there _is_ this extra space existing on this backpack…"

            Her words were stopped short when Jonathan held up his hand abruptly. He took the backpack and looked into it real carefully. He felt for the pouch and slowly pulled out the excess flap. He fingered the zip that was in the bottom of the backpack and eyed at the sewing and the handy work. When he looked up at Rebecca, her face showed that she had more or less figured out what he was trying to do.

            "I think," Jonathan rubbed his chin thoughtfully as his lips slowly creased into a small grin, "we need to issue a search warrant."

                                                                                                *

            While the CSI team carried on with their late hours at the office, the whole housing estate of Taman Sungai where Gary lived was silent as everyone has tucked in quietly into their beds and slipping into their peaceful slumber. Only some houses were still lit in the dead of the night, and that includes Gary's room.

            Inside Gary's room, his radio was on, playing the song 'Numb' by Linkin Park. He had just come home from clubbing with a few of his long-time-no-see primary school friends and he smelt seriously of cigarette smoke and alcohol. He took a whiff of himself and wrinkled his nose.

            "Phew! I seriously need a shower, or Mom's gonna kick my ass for this," Gary muttered to himself as he moved towards the bathroom. He turned on the water faucet and let the water run while he undressed himself off his dirty, smelly clothes.

            He was so engrossed in doing his own thing and listening to the music that he didn't hear a small creak coming from behind him. He didn't hear someone creeping from behind him and he didn't even hear the perpetrator taking his table lamp from his table. Only when he turned around wanting to prepare a clean set of clothing he saw something blurry coming towards his face and knocking him out cold…

                                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            Gary groaned and slowly stirred. His aching head throbbed as he tried to recall where he was and what just happened. Everything had happened way too fast—he remembered something hitting his head but couldn't remember who aimed that thing on his head. He looked around and found himself in the bathroom. How long had he been out? How long had he been unconscious? Judging by the light streaming into his bathroom through the window, he reckoned that it could have been a very long time.

            That's when he realized that his whole body was popping goose bumps and he was feeling extremely cold. He looked down and saw that he was in the bath tub filled with ice. He took one absentmindedly and stared at it for a while, realizing that it was real ice cubes. He wasn't dreaming; he was actually in a tub filled with ice cubes and he was completely naked. What happened? He was about to take a shower last night and found himself like this. What was going on?

            As he slowly tried to get up, he felt a really sharp pain in his abdomen. It was as if he was being stabbed or somewhat. He crawled painfully out of the bath tub and moved slowly towards the cordless phone he had on his bed. The pain was increasing and getting unbearable and he felt as if he wanted to throw up. He had to get a doctor and quick. He couldn't stand the pain. When he was getting closer towards the phone, his mother came in unannounced, her face looking quite displeased.

            "Young man, you're getting late for school! Now get your butt off bed and—"

            Her angry words were immediately cut short and a bloodcurdling scream escaped her lips.

            She was staring at her son bleeding with a half-opened bloody back that exposed his spinal cord.

A/N: Oh man! That is so gross! Now that's what I call busted by your parents! Reviews plz! 


	10. Another Clue In The Blue

A/N: Oh boy, we have a tough case in our hands here! Where's the CSI team when you need one? Let's get on with the show, people! Sorry, writer's block attack again. :P

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "Thank you very much."

            Jonathan took the piece of envelope given by one of the crime lab office boys with a satisfied look on his face. He had asked for a warrant to search Gary's house after having a certain lead on the new backpack thanks to the clues given by Rebecca the fashion freak. He contacted his usual searching raid team Judith and Elaine to meet at the crime lab early so that they can go on their search. Rebecca wished to tag along too so that she could take pictures of the search raid.

            The girls came as they promised they would and they all rode on Elaine's car towards Gary's home. On their way, Jonathan's cell phone rang. He picked it up.

            "Hello…? Uh-huh? Yeah? What? We're on our way."

            "Who was that?" Rebecca asked.

            "It's the cops," Jonathan replied. "It seems that the place where we're going to raid actually turned into a crime scene."

            "I told you!" Rebecca exclaimed. "I told you we should give them protective custody! But do you listen? No~! Now look what happened!"

            "Alright, alright," Elaine grumbled, irritated. "We get the point already! Don't try rubbing it in or anything!"

            "Let's just go there and we can do both a search and our usual CSI business," Jonathan said authoritatively. "No point arguing. I've already said we'll put this issue aside for the moment."

            When they got there, there were a few other police cars outside the house and an ambulance just leaving the house, its sirens blaring. The CSI members expected that Gary had been taken away and that they've just missed them. They got off the car and walked towards one of the officers who was asking questions at probably the father of Gary.

            "Identification, please," the officer, who was a Kadazan, stopped them from coming closer towards the house. They all flashed their badges at him.

            "Chief Inspector Jonathan Mark David from the Crime Scene Investigation," Jonathan said in usual formal way, "and these are my colleagues Detective Judith Lai, Elaine Majon and Rebecca Liew. One of your men called us here. What just happened here?"

            "We have a crime scene here," the officer replied. "Their eldest son, Gary Yap, was being cut open and his organ removed before he was left to die in the bath tub. He's still alive though, lucky guy. You just missed him."

            "Which organ was he being removed of?" Judith suddenly stepped forward and asked.

            "Do you have to know?" the officer asked with a disgusted look on his face before clearing his throat and replied, "Well, he got his kidneys gouged out, and the person who did it didn't bother to sew him back up. His mother was shocked beyond words. She was so shocked, she just lost her voice altogether."

            Judith fell silent almost immediately. She dashed into the house without a word, ignoring the calls from her head of the crime lab, and stomped quickly into Gary's room, careful not to step on anything important for investigation. She took a look inside the bathroom and saw the blood at the bottom of the tub beneath all the melting ice cubes and took one of the blood-soaked ice cubes to inspect. Her eyes then trailed all the way to the bedroom where a trail of thick-looking blood leading towards the bed was.

            She did it all in silence, practically oblivious of the curious eyes of her CSI colleagues or the other officers. She was doing it so quickly, so mysteriously and so suddenly that her CSI colleagues didn't where to continue. Finally she walked out of the house, taking the car keys abruptly from Elaine, and moved quickly towards the car, taking the driver's seat. Jonathan told the officer to relocate the Yap family to a new place and keep this crime scene untouched so that they can do another thorough investigation before following behind Jude with the others. They all looked questioningly at their mysterious member of the team; they could never figure out what was really going on in his mind, really. As she started the car, Elaine laid a hand on hers to catch her attention.

            "Jude, where exactly are we going? You're doing that silent mysterious treatment again."

            "We have to go to the hospital quick and ask as much questions as we can before we lose Gary," Judith replied, her eyes fixed to the road.

            "And why is that?" Rebecca asked.

            "Because he was attacked using another urban legend I read from one of Rach's books—about a flight attendant being tricked by a couple of Japanese locals who were really organ thieves and got him really drunk before they removed his kidneys alive while he was unconscious. And judging by the blood in the tub and all the other blood on the carpet of his room, I'll say he won't be alive much longer, even with medical help."

                                                                                                *

            Jonathan, Judith, Elaine and Rebecca walked as quickly as they could down the corridor of the hospital where Gary was admitted. Jonathan asked for Gary's room from the receptionist nurse and he was soon led by a superior-looking—maybe the head nurse—to the ICU centre. At upon reaching the ICU centre, the CSI members were told to wait outside Ward 321 while the head nurse walked into the ward and informed the doctor who was checking on Gary about their arrival. The doctor came out of the ward and shook hands with Jonathan.

            "Good morning, Chief Inspector. I'm Dr. Tan," the doctor introduced himself as he reached out to the girls to shake their hand. "I suppose you're here for this boy's case."

            "We sure are," Jonathan replied. "What's his condition, Dr. Tan?"

            "Not too good," Dr. Tan replied doubtfully. "We don't think he'll be able to survive through tonight. We have informed his parents of being ready for this coming. He's been left in that bath tub for too long and his cut open back has been exposed for too long. Germs have infected it and he's going down pretty quick. So if you have anything you want to ask him, make it quick, 'coz his family is coming in later."

            The team nodded and made their way quietly into the ward and towards the bed where Gary was lying in. the doctor was right—he didn't look too good and by the sight of it, one small nudge could make him fall into the pits of death. They had to move in quick.

            "Gary? Gary, wake up," Rebecca touched Gary lightly on the shoulder, taking him out of his slumber. Gary stirred a little and his eyes seemed to recognize the team.

            "Sorry to wake you, slugger, but we have some important questions for you," Jonathan said. "Do you think you can talk, maybe just a little?"

            Gary moved his head a little side by side, indicating that he couldn't. Elaine stepped up to him and said, "Here, this is my palm. Just tap once for 'Yes' and twice for 'No'. We'll get the picture."

            "The backpack you showed me that day when I sent you home from the concert," Elaine started. "Is it really yours?"

            There was no response from him. Judith could see from his eyes that he was hesitating.

            "Tell the truth, Gary. No one is going to get you now. Is it really your backpack?"

            A quivering hand from Gary reached out and tapped Elaine's palm. Two taps. It was a 'No'.

            "It belonged to someone else, isn't it? Someone from your group of friends?" Rebecca asked.

            One tap. A 'Yes'.

            "Is it still in your home?" Jonathan asked.

            Yes.

            "Did you kill your friend Cliff?" Judith asked.

            A hesitant 'Yes'.

            "Using Jeremy's army knife?"

            Yes.

            "Did you commit the other murder too, the one on Lionel's brothers and sister?" Elaine asked.

            An immediate 'No'.

            "Is it? Are you really telling the truth about not killing Lionel's siblings?" Jonathan looked at Gary skeptically.

            Yes.

            "Someone told you to murder Cliff, didn't he?" Judith asked.

            Yes.

            Judith walked closer towards Gary and removed his breathing mask a little, bringing her face closer towards his mouth, "You can tell me who ordered you to kill. No one is going to get you. Tell me, who told you to kill Cliff?"

            "Jude, his parents are here," Elaine called out. Judith looked up and saw Gary's parents talking to Dr. Tan and looking very devastated indeed.

            "But, Mark David, he's almost going to tell me. We're having a real suspect here," Judith said indignantly. "He's about to tell me. He's…"

            "Jude, let it go," Jonathan pulled her away and replaced the breathing mask over Gary's mouth. "We need to think of his family out there. Don't make him worse as it is."

            Judith knew what he meant. As much as she wanted to know who the real suspect to this crime was, she had to respect the family's wishes to have their last words with him. Reluctantly, she moved away from the bed and followed her team out of the ward. As she walked out last from the ward, someone grabbed her sleeve. It was Gary's little brother, looking at her with watery eyes.

            "You're a police, right? Have you caught the bad guy who hurt my brother?"

            "No, not yet, sweetie," Judith replied. "But we will. I promise."

            "And when you do," the father suddenly voiced out determinedly, "don't arrest him. You hear me? Don't arrest him."

            She knew what Gary's father meant.

            Shoot at sight.

                                                                                                *

            The CSI team was at Gary's house again, doing a thorough search as written in their job description. They searched everywhere in Gary's room to find the whereabouts of the backpack he claimed he had kept, but Jonathan found it instead dumped inside the dark tool shed in the backyard. He passed it to another fellow CSI to be brought to the crime lab for Rachel to analyze. 

            "There's no sign of a break-in here," Elaine said as she checked the perimeters. "The lock of the door wasn't broken, the front door is a-OK and none of the windows showed any signs of forced entry. It seems as if the murderer knew his way in the house."

            "Just like the way the murderer knew his way into Lionel's house," Jonathan said. "I wonder how he knew how to get in without alerting the household…"

            As if answering his question, his hand accidentally hit something hollow in the wall inside Gary's closet. He tapped it for a few times and realized that it was making a lot of hollow sounds in it. He touched and felt the wall until his hand felt a small handle on it. He gestured for Judith to turn on the closet light and noticed that there was a seam on the wall that formed a small door. He gave it a little shove and the door opened outward.

            "Speak of the devil, look at this, girls," Jonathan said as he called for the girls to look at what he had found. Judith was the first to check it out—she always had a knack of being interested in new things. The other girls followed suite, turning on their torch lights at the process. The hallway was pretty dark and the walls which were made out of wood seriously needed a makeover, judging by the mould that has collected on it. The floor was pretty sandy and all as they went deeper and deeper into the dark passageway. When they finally came to the end of their dark 'trip', which was another door, Jonathan opened it and they soon realized that they were standing in the middle of a large wine cellar.

            "Woah! Look at all these wine bottles!" Elaine exclaimed as she eyed greedily at all the wine bottles stashed into their racks. Judith took one and looked at the label.

            "Wow, a 1970 Burgundy! Very good year, I reckon. I remember drinking this when I was Primary 6. Who's got a cork opener?"

            "Now's not the time to start intoxicating yourself, you bakasaru!" Jonathan said sternly as he snatched the bottle away from Judith. "We got a case to solve here!"

            "Hey, I found our way out!" Rebecca hollered, pointing at a short staircase that went upwards. The team walked towards the staircase and walked up. When they opened the door above, they found themselves staring at the tool shed just a few feet in front of them.

            "Guess we know how our murderer got in," Jonathan concluded before his cell phone rang. He answered it and looked pretty grave.

            "Who was it, Mark David?" Judith asked after he hung up the phone.

            "It was Justin. He had heard wind about Gary and had just received news that Gary has been officially dead. He's requested the hospital to send him the body for autopsy. We gotta be there. And that means no eating in front of a corpse again, Jude!"

            "Yeah, yeah, whatever," Judith replied, crossing her fingers behind her back.

A/N: Well, we're gonna be back at the autopsy room cutting up people again. Have you figured out who is the murderer? 'Coz I'm not telling! Reviews plz! 


	11. Past Heartbreaks & Present Heartaches

A/N: Autopsy time! Are we gonna start with cutting up the body first or have a dinner in front of the corpse first? Nya ha ha ha! Kidding! Come on, let's get on with the case!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            Justin was about to get started with Gary's body when Jonathan came in. Judith didn't attempt to follow him in this time. He came in alone. Justin looked up and noticed his head of crime lab standing at the head of the bed.

            "Well, aren't you as silent as a cat," Justin grinned, then shifted his eyes behind Jonathan. "Hey, where's Jude? I thought she always hang out with you."

            "Not this time, Justin," Jonathan replied. "She had to go to the post office to mail her latest manga to this comic magazine company Gempak. Just when you think you couldn't pay her enough out of this crime lab job, she's out there making more for herself."

            "Oh?" Justin muttered while fitting on his surgical gloves. "What's her manga about this time?"

            "Something to do with blood and gore and love at the same time. I suppose her job influenced her artwork somehow. So, how's our 'involuntary organ donor' doing?"

            "I found a blood clot on the back of his head, probably hit by something hard and blunt," Justin replied as he pried on Gary's head. "I'll have to say that this blow is just enough to knock him out. It's not the cause of death."

            "Obviously not," Jonathan rolled his eyes. "We've found the table lamp beside the bookshelf when we did our investigation at his house, with a trace of blood on it. We've taken that table lamp as evidence. What do you think about the kidney removal on his back?"

            "I must say that I'm impressed with this," Justin said as he turned Gary's body around to expose the back, revealing the insides. "This is a very clean cut and what I can make of it is that whoever did this must be a true surgeon, 'coz these cuts are most likely done using a scalpel."

            "You serious?" Jonathan was surprised.

            "Yeah, take a look at this," Justin said as he lifted the flap of the skin and showed the cut to Jonathan. "See this? It is a very, very neat and very clean cut. Not even a kitchen knife or a penknife could make it that clean. And look at the veins where the kidney is connected. It is cut professionally smooth and clear. Only a scalpel can fit into such edges and cut it without damaging anything part of the organs inside. Why do you think Gary could be still walking—or crawling, to be correct—if this were to be done using any other sharp object? He could've been dead in the midway of the kidney extraction."

            "I see your point," Jonathan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You know, before Gary here died, he confessed to us about murdering Cliff."

            "Serious? He confessed as in literally or…?"

            "He couldn't exactly talk, but we got a testimony from him alright. He confessed murdering Cliff and all those stuff, it's just that he didn't get to tell us how he did it and how did he kill the Han siblings."

            "What, you're suspecting him of being the murderer of Lionel Han's brothers and sister too?" Justin looked at him, surprised.

            "He said he didn't do it, but you can't be too careful about a dying person's words."

            "I think he's telling the truth, because what I've found from the murders of the Han siblings and Cliff's murder, they don't tally," Justin said. "See, the person who killed the Han siblings had to go into their room through the window to kill them, which means he had to be a good climber and all. But look at Gary's X-rays I took covering the whole body," Justin held up a piece of X-ray film that showed the leg, "see, these slightly irregular setting of the joint and this small fracture mend of the bone indicates that not only Gary has dislocated his knee more than once, but he has also broke his thigh bone. I've checked his medical records and his physician said that after undergoing intense treatment and rehabilitation, he can't do any other games except basketball, which he's playing now. Which means…"

            "He can't even climb a tree without a ladder, let alone a wall of a house," Jonathan said disappointedly, remembering that at the first crime scene in Lionel Han's home, he never found a ladder of any kind.

            "Exactly, so he really didn't kill the Hans," Justin pointed before taking out a surgical needle and some thread. "Besides, your girlfriend has already told me that she had suspicions about Gary being the murderer of Cliff."

            "She's not my girl…Excuse me?" Jonathan was about to protest but soon stopped short. "Did you say Judith somehow knew that Gary was the one who killed Cliff?"

            "Yeah. She said that Gary somehow accidentally revealed his crime while you guys were checking out the crime scene at Alor Setar at the concert stadium. You'd better ask her on that, don't ask me."

            "Why is it that she tells everyone what she knows and yet she withholds it from me?" Jonathan muttered, his hands on his waist in annoyance.

            "Guess she's still a little sore. It's not easy for a girl to forget her past, you know," Justin replied nonchalantly as he sewed the body up. His nimble hands went in and out and were moving professionally fast that within no time, Gary's wounds were sewn up and seemed like he had never died a scratch before.

            "Oh, and I guess you know so much about girls," Jonathan waved his arms sarcastically. "I can see the way she likes to hang out with you and eating together in front of corpses, and have no care of the world about whether or not you'll contaminate the evidence on the corpse, and I can see the way you get along with her so well sharing your food and all. You like her, don't you? Admit it."

            "I do like her, I don't deny that," Justin replied as he pulled a sheet and covered the body. "I've always liked her since the day she joined the CSI team. But when I saw you and her hanging out so much, I kinda assumed that she wasn't available and that she was your girlfriend, that is, until she told me about her past with you. You know, from what I heard from her, I don't think guys are supposed to treat their girlfriends the way you did…"

            "You sneaky little nosy brat!" Jonathan hissed, his eyes glaring dangerously at the coroner. "I told you a thousand times, she is not my girl—"

            "You know what?" Justin turned abruptly towards his head of the crime lab with a grudging look on his face, and as he spoke, he jabbed his finger onto Jonathan's chest. "That is _exactly_ the kind of attitude which made you single and a loner until now and that's _exactly_ the kind of attitude that made Jude dump you in the first place!"

                                                                                                *

            Judith had just came back from the post office and was talking with Elaine while walking down the corridor of the crime lab. She was telling Elaine excitedly about her latest manga she just mailed to Gempak and Elaine was listening just as excitedly.

            "And then the boyfriend, the vampire slayer, was shocked to find out that it was his girlfriend was actually the vampire that had killed his parents, can you imagine that?"

            "Serious? You actually drew that? What's next?"

            "Then the boyfriend charged towards the girlfriend and was about to stake her when…"

            "Judith, come here."

            Judith looked up and saw that it was Jonathan. His face looked pretty grave and all and he seemed like in a mood for punching the lights out of someone. Not that she never saw this kind of face before. She walked towards him nonchalantly.

            "What's up?" she asked.

            "What is that I heard that you have already known that Gary was the one who killed Cliff?" Jonathan asked sternly. She was used to that tone.

            "Oh, so Justin told you already? Well, then I won't have to waste my breath explaining it to you again now, should I?"

            "I thought all of us agreed upon telling their opinions and suspicions, no matter how small, to me first hand before anyone else."

            "My opinions are of my own and I tell it to whomever I please first. Besides, I probably had my fingers crossed," Judith replied, folding her arms across her chest. "You're not the boss of me anyway, well, at least not to me."

            "Hait, hait, you never liked being bossed around anyway, since you've been in the streets and an outlaw for so long," Jonathan sighed, not wanting to argue. "Then would you mind telling me how did you know Gary was Cliff's killer, at least?"

            "Because he had made a slip-up when they got to the crime scene," Judith replied. "See, they were making much of a racket—anyone would after seeing their friend's dead body—and I couldn't help hearing something. You and Rebecca have already taken down Cliff's body from the tree and were examining him on the ground, and he was already off the tree when the rest of the gundan got there."

            "Yeah, so?" Jonathan was still waiting for the punch line.

            "Well, you remember them yelling and shouting and hollering really devastating things when they saw Cliff's body, right? If you try to remember carefully, what did Gary holler about?"

            "That was 4 days ago! How can I remember something so distant as that?"

            "Try. Think back. Try and remember what Gary hollered."

            "Well…" Jonathan tried to think back. "I think I do remember him saying that Cliff was hanging on the tree dead…"

            His words stopped. A realization came to him and what Judith was trying to tell him made sense. He snapped his fingers, "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?! He couldn't have any idea about Cliff's situation of death if he didn't kill him! We've already taken down his body but Gary said that Cliff was hanging on the tree dead! It was impossible for him to know that if he wasn't at the scene of the crime!" (**A/N: Read Chap 5 if you don't get it**)

            "See? I knew you'd get it eventually," Judith grinned.     

            "Jude, can I ask you something?" Jonathan asked after a moment's silence.

            "Fire away."

            "Are you…I mean are you still sore about…"

            "Oops, gotta run!" Judith said abruptly, turning around and heading towards the direction of the analysis lab. "Got lots of work to do if we want to catch the murderer quick, you know."

            Jonathan grumbled and stared grudgingly at the leaving Judith, muttering under his breath, "You are always running away."

            "Oh, and by the way," Judith turned around to face her head of the crime lab again, "just to make you happy, I also have a suspicion that this murder might be a chain murder."

            "A chain murder?" Jonathan eyed his co-worker curiously.

            "Well, you know, as in the first to start the murder would be the next to kill and the person who kill the first murderer would be the next one to be killed again, and on and so forth. 'Coz I've been thinking a lot on this case while we're at it, and I realized that Cliff was murdered by Gary who in turn was the next victim to be dead. So I figured that it was Cliff who murdered those Han siblings, which is the start of it all. You might wanna check out his house to see if he has hidden any specific murder weapon. And also I think whoever killed Gary would be the next target to be killed. OK, see you around! Ja-ne!"

            "Ma…Matte! What do you mean…" Again, Jonathan's words stopped short. Another thought came through his head after hearing Judith's theory. He stood there all alone on the corridor, oblivious to his surroundings for a minute there, his brain working as quickly and as calmly as he could.

            Soon, he found himself rushing towards Rebecca's office and asking her to issue a license for protective custody.

                                                                                                *

            "You better remember not to turn on the lights, you lil' brat! You know what a light sleeper I am and I don't appreciate being waken up in the middle of the night!"

            "Yeah, yeah, whatever."

            Nicholas glared at his brother Jasper warningly as the boy walked out of the room. He then turned back to his Space Impact game on his handphone, pressing furiously at the control panels trying to defeat the alien aircrafts that were shooting at his aircraft. Nicholas's parents were outstation for the weekend so his younger brother Jasper, who was obviously thinner than him, decided to go out on a late-night movie with his friends to watch a premiere about some new battle space cum romance movie anime. He always had the knack to go out at night when their parents are not around, which is always as his father was a famous surgeon and his mother was an air stewardess.

            He played and played for quite a long time until when he was finally done with the last level, the numbers on his digital clock were showing 1:25 a.m. He went off and cleaned himself up before getting ready for bed. After putting on his nightclothes, he turned off the lights and climbed up his bed, hoping that this time, his brother would remember _not_ to turn the lights on. As he dozed off to sleep, the window of his bedroom quietly opened…

                                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            Jasper came back home at about 2:30 a.m. after watching the movie anime with his friends and was humming the theme song on his way into his house. He hummed the song while he took his shower, he hummed the song while brushing his teeth and he even hummed the song while he walked into the bedroom which he and his brother shared. As he entered the room, his hand automatically reached out for the light but the stern warning of his brother earlier before he left stopped him. Either that or he had a strange feeling that he would definitely not like what he might see if he turned on the light.

            "You got lucky, bro," Jasper whispered at his brother who was lying on his stomach not moving an inch. Looking at his brother sleeping like a log on the bed, he muttered to himself, "So much for being a light-sleeper."

            So it didn't occur to him that he would find his brother already dead the next day on the bed with his throat slit and his blood staining the bed sheet and it definitely didn't occur to him that he would see the wall having a message on it written in his brother's blood, saying:

            **_AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU DIDN'T TURN ON THE LIGHT?_**

A/N: Eeps! Now this is creepy. This is one of the scariest urban legends I've come across so far, and I was shivering when I typed those words. Scary~! :/ 


	12. Findings & Surprises

A/N: So, still haven't got the clue on who dunnit? Well, you have to carry on reading 'coz I ain't gonna tell you till the time is right and ripe! Muaks~! Oh, and for the information of ACatFiend, thanks for your reviews and these are the answers to your questions:

            **~A Kadazan is one of many natives in the Asian country, especially in ****West Malaysia**** and ****East Malaysia**

**            ~Manga means 'comic' in Japanese **

**            ~Gundan means 'group/team' in Japanese**

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "Oh boy, we're a little bit too late."

            The CSI team was in Nicholas' home checking out the crime scene. Rachel had, for once, decided to come along to check out the crime scene. She had an envelope with the protective custody in it, prepared by Rebecca, ready to be signed by the consenting parents of both Lionel and Nicholas, but it seemed that Nicholas is rather out of the list literally now. Rachel silently thought that she's d better get rid of the papers for Nicholas before the family gets upset that their plan to protect him was too late.

            "Where were you when this happened?" Jonathan began to question Jasper, who was sitting in the living room looking pretty shook up. His hands were trembling when Rachel got him a tall glass of milk from the kitchen.

            "My parents, well, they were outstation and all, so, I, uh, I went out for a movie," Jasper replied, his voice quivering, still unable to get over the shock of seeing his brother dead early in the morning. "You know, that new anime movie, just in case you're asking."

            Rachel rolled her eyes, a little afraid that mentioning 'anime' in front of this anime fanatic head of crime lab would switch his 'anime fanatic mechanism' on. Lucky for her, he continued his questioning.

            "What time did you leave home, Jasper, and what time did you come home?"

            "Well, I left at about 11.30 p.m. and then came home at about 2, maybe 2.30 in the morning," Jasper replied. "I'm not in trouble, am I? I don't wanna let my parents know I wasn't home. They'll surely blame me for his death. They always blame me for everything…"

            "Calm down, boy," Rachel laid a hand on his shoulder. "You won't get into trouble. Why don't you call up somebody who you can live with and move out of here for a few days?"

            "My cousin Timothy could spare me a space."

            "Good. Go and call him. We'll take it from here."

            After seeing Jasper to the telephone, she followed Jonathan upstairs to the crime scene. Justin,who also decided to join in the investigation outside the autopsy room, was there at the bed checking out on Nicholas' body. She looked around and checked the place out. There was no sign of any footprints, no sign of forced entry on the window, no nothing. It was exactly the same kind as Judith described it on the other crime scenes she had seen—no trace that might lead to the suspect.

            "I assumed that this is where the suspect came in. There is no sign of forced entry in here though, Jon. I don't see any broken glass or a broken door knob or a broken door, to be exact," Rachel said as she took a picture of the open window she was standing close to. "There's not even a strand of hair in here. No murder weapon, no blood, no nothing. This suspect of yours is good. It's as if he knew what he was doing, like some kind of homework memorized by heart."

            "Too good, perhaps," Justin second the motion while he was checking on the body. "There practically aren't any footprints around here, and he had left nothing on this body, not even half a fingerprint. Well, except this slit wound on his throat, that is."

            "What can you deduce from the slit, Justin?" Jonathan asked, leaning over to check out the fat chubby dead Nicholas.

            "Well, I can say that there was a little struggle going on in here, but it's quite brief. The killer did it swift and quick, and judging by the slit wound on his throat, I'd say it's done with a penknife. And I think he meant to use that just to let him suffer 'coz usually the smaller the sharp object cut through the skin, the more painful it feels, yet the less it cuts. I wouldn't say no to bet that these words on the wall was written using his own blood, but I think while the murderer was writing these words, Nicholas was still alive."

            "Slow and painful death," Jonathan stared at the words written in bold blood and rubbed his chin. "Typical case of revenge and payback."

            "Revenge?" Rachel turned to him.

            "Payback?" Justin didn't turn around, but his tone sounded surprised.

            "Sorry, forgot to tell you about this case in detail," Jonathan apologized and while he looked for clues, he told Rachel and Justin, the indoor members of the CSI team, about the case and his and Judith's suspicions.

            "So you're saying that this murder is all connected to one certain incident—the prank on Jeremy during the PMR celebration?" Rachel tried to confirm his words.

            "Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying," Jonathan nodded his head.

            "Looks like we're having a really tough case," Justin replied as he signaled one of the coroner juniors to bring in the body bag to put Nicholas in. "Like you said, it's a chain murder case, where Cliff killed the Han siblings, then was killed by Gary which in turn could be killed by this poor fat fellow here. Whoever killed Nicholas could be the next target. How is this getting on? I mean, there is practically no head or tail for this."

            "We're not sure yet," Jonathan replied as he took a blood sample from the wall while Rachel took a picture of it. "We still need to find a motive for Cliff to kill the Han siblings. Jude and the rest are now at his home searching. They might come up with something sooner or later."

            "With two bad girls together and one fashion fanatic, I bet they can find something," Rachel grinned.

                                                                                                *

            "Found anything yet, guys?"

            "Not yet!"

            Judith, Elaine and Rebecca were at Cliff's house trying to look for any clues that might lead to him killing the Han siblings. After Cliff's death, his family didn't think the place they were living was safe anymore and they have decided to move to Pulau Pinang to live with Cliff's uncle (on his mother's side), leaving the house pretty much empty and deserted, waiting to be sold by other people. Judith has informed the realtors of this housing estate beforehand that they are not to sell the house until they have finish raiding it. So far, they haven't come up with anything yet.

            "Hey, guys, look," Rebecca called out of the blue, waving a thick book. "I found their school yearbook. I hope they don't mind me taking it. There could be evidence in there."

            "Becka, we're here in search of murder weapons, not in search of high school Prom Kings and Queens!" Elaine groaned exasperatedly at the ever jolly Rebecca who was flipping through the pages of the yearbook gleefully.

            "Weird," Judith scratched her chin. "I was sure that there has to be something in here that connects Cliff with the death of the Han siblings. Where can it be?"

            "Maybe you've guessed it wrong," Rebecca said as she put away the yearbook and rummaged through Cliff's wardrobe, checking out his clothes and holding them out to the mirror attached to the wardrobe door to see. "I told you, this is a wild goose chase. If you have listened to me and give them protective custody in the first place, we could've avoided all this trouble."

            "Don't push your luck, girlfriend," Elaine called out from Cliff's parents' room. "Just keep searching. If Jude says there's something here, then there's definitely something here."

            "Thanks for the support, Elaine," Judith sighed gratefully as she leaned against the wall, "but maybe Becka's right. There's nothing in here to pinpoint Cliff on anything. We're checked everywhere, even the storeroom. There's nothing here. Let's go back to the crime lab and back to the drawing board."

            With that, the trio girls put away their gear and went out of the house. Judith turned around and took one last look at the house. It was a double-storey house with a small attic affixed on the middle of the roof (they've checked there—there was nothing). It looked pretty beautiful and quaint, almost like the houses Americans lived in which she seen in movies and in TV, and it had a garden to match. And right now, Rebecca was stopping to smell the roses planted at one side of the flower beds.

            "This smells heavenly!" Rebecca complimented as she sniffed at one of the roses. "Too bad they had to go away in a hurry. These roses would look lovely in the garden of their new home in Pulau Pinang."

            "Yeah, they look pretty cool," Elaine agreed half-heartedly (she didn't have much interest in flowers). "And though I'm no flower expert, it doesn't take a genius to tell that these flowers are either being fed with steroids or just plain too much manure."

            Rebecca and Judith looked carefully at the rose bush and realized that Elaine was right—the left side of the rose bush was growing much better than the right side. The flowers were bigger and the leaves were greener and they stood taller than the right side. The trio was surprised at this oddity.

            "Now what could cause this kind of irregularity?" Judith asked, mostly to herself. "The family has moved out almost immediately after Cliff's death and it's obvious that they hadn't even bothered to tend the garden, judging by the other drying flowers, but why is this one so fresh?"

            "Beats me," Elaine replied in a bored way as she lit a cigarette. "Let's get out of this joint. I'm hungry and we haven't found anything since we got here."

            Judith remained silent. She waited for a while for Elaine to take a whiff of her cigarette before taking it and took a whiff of it herself. Her eyes remained stock still on the fresh big roses and Rebecca, through experience, could see that Judith was on to something.

            "I can see your thinking cap on your head, Jude," Rebecca said as she made way for Judith. "Make your point already."

            Judith returned the cigarette back to Elaine and went down on her knees in front of the healthy rose bush. She looked real close at the soil that hid the roots and noticed a few small flies concentrating on that part of the soil. Using her plastic-gloved hands, she shooed the flies away and dug at the soil until she saw the roots. She dug a little deeper and noticed that the roots were slightly stuck onto something metallic. She then signaled her colleagues to help her root out the whole rose bush. As the three of them pulled, the roots pulled along something long and bulky. It was covered with dirt and slightly unrecognizable but when they plucked the roots off it and dusted off the dirt, they all grinned at what they have finally found.

            "Looks like we've just found out who's been doing a little 'hacking' on the Han siblings."

                                                                                                *

            "Nope. No fingerprints. Not a single one."

            Rachel and Rebecca were running fingerprint dusting on the axe they have found buried under the flower beds of Cliff's garden and so far, they have found nothing. There was a blood reaction on the blade alright, but no fingerprints.

            "It's kinda creepy to know that those roses have been feeding a little off the blood on the axe," Rebecca grimaced at the axe.

            "It's not uncommon," Rachel, the ever knowing Human Library, replied. "I've read somewhere that a couple who was buried under their favourite apple tree actually made their apple tree grow bigger and healthier with juicier fruits because it has been feeding off the decaying body of the couple. They found out that the tree's roots have pierced through their coffin and their bodies were nowhere to be found."

            "Eew! That is so gross!" Rebecca groaned in disgust. "Remind me not to bury myself under any kind of plants, favourite or not."

            "I kinda noticed though that this axe is abnormally smooth," Rachel said as she ran her hands across the handle of the axe a little.

            "Come to think of it, you're right," Rebecca agreed as she, too, ran her hand on the axe handle. "It's as if the murderer was using…"

            "Sandpaper," Rachel said, "and I bet most of the sandpaper work was done," she pointed at the end of the handle, "here. See this patch? If you look a little bit more closely, it's slightly whiter than the rest of the handle."

            "You're right! It's like the murderer is trying to scrape of the brand of the axe!"

            "If my speculations are correct," Rachel said as she took the axe carefully to her office, "this axe came out somewhere in a catalog book on hardware from a certain hardware store. Let me see if I can find it."

            Rachel stood before her shelf of books and scanned through the books in there. One specialty of Rachel was that she can spot a book anywhere if she kept her mind on it. Even if you hid a thin magazine in the middle of a collection of thick Guinness Book of Records, she'll find it almost instantly. So Rebecca didn't have to wait long until Rachel took out a catalog book with the company name in bold fancy letters: JOTHAN LO'S FIXIT & CO.

            "See, right here. The exact same model," Rachel flipped the pages and pointed at one of the axes in display.

            "Well then, let's pay this Jothan Lo a visit," Rebecca said as she carefully bagged the axe and went out with Rachel to her car. After driving about 15 minutes or so, they soon found themselves right in front of the hardware store bearing the sing like the one in the catalog.

            "Yup, that's our store's axe alright," a man with long bright brown hair—obviously dyed—said as he sared at the axe in the evidence plastic bag held out to him by Rebecca once they were inside the store.

            "How do you know it's yours?" Rebecca asked, just to make sure.

            "Of course I know it's mine," the man said proudly. "My grandfather, Jothan Lo—God bless his soul—have been working on this business since he's 16 and this business has been carried down from generation to genereation. Of course I know the ins and outs of my products and I can spot someone using my store's nails even from 5 miles away! Besides, only our store sells these handmade axes."

            "He's right," Rachel replied. "These axes are handmade and made in Thailand, an records show that only your company has contacts with Thailand for these axes."

            "Smart lil' miss detective you are," the man complimented with a grin.

            "I thought you're Jothan Lo," Rebecca was surprised.

            "Well, yeah, I'm Jothan Lo the 3rd. My grandfather was the first Jothan Lo of the Jothan Lo's Fixit & Co. What about it?"

            "Never mind," Rachel shoved Rebecca aside and got right down to business. "Do you remember who bought this axe? Have you kept any record of it, say about more than a week ago?"

            "As a matter of fact, I have," Jothan Lo the 3rd replied as he went to get his record book. "Not much people buy axes these days—there's nothing here to chop anyway—so I remember quite clearly who buys my axes. Although I'm not sure why a nice lady like her would want a bulky axe like that."

            "Lady?" Both Rachel and Rebecca lit up. "Did you say a lady bought this axe?"

            "Yeah," Jothan Lo the 3rd began describing her. "She's about my height and has long dyed burgundy hair. I couldn't see her yes though—she was wearing sunglasses. Oh, and she was wearing a really sexy blue dress, the one used to be very famous in the Cleo magazines. She just picked the axe and paid for it without saying a word. I thought she was mute. Is there something wrong, lil' miss detectives?"

            Rachel and Rebecca have just found themselves further away from solving the case.

A/N: The string of clues have led them to…a woman? Woah! What'll be next then? Not telling! Reviews plz! ^_^


	13. The Murder Continues

A/N: Sorry for the really long delay. I was attacked by WBS (Writer's Block Syndrome)! Gomenasai, gomenasai!! Anyways, the case is getting stronger and more mysterious now! What would happen?? Stay tuned!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA 

            "A lady? How can that be?"

            The CSI team who gathered together at the recreational room gave their reports of their findings to the head of the crime lab and Judith was the most surprised to hear this news from Rachel and Rebecca.

            "Well, that's what we heard from that Jothan Lo guy," Rebecca shrugged. "He said no one buys axes these days and he remembers perfectly who and when a certain axe was bought."

            "He even kept a record of it and it was confirmed," Rachel chided in. "The woman bought the axe about 2 days before the Han siblings' murder."

            "Darn! That's even further than whom I suspected," Jonathan said, a little annoyed. "Are you saying that now we should be looking for a burgundy-haired woman who goes around killing people because of a prank done by drunken kids a few years ago?"

            "It's not impossible," Elaine replied. "She could be Jeremy's girlfriend or some obsessed person who has a crush on Jeremy to be going on a killing spree like this."

            "And we thought we've got our guy this time," Justin muttered, as equally disappointed as the rest. "Hey, guys. Do you realize our victims are often missing a portion of their body parts?"

            "Meaning…?" Rachel looked at Justin questioningly.

            "I've been doing a little bit more autopsies on those victims and I realized that they often have some portion of their body parts missing. Like for example, the Han siblings. They were either missing an arm or a leg. For Cliff, I saw that there's a clean cut somewhere at the end of the large intestines, which means that our killer Gary has taken away a portion of it. And then Gary on the other hand was missing his kidneys. And finally Nicholas was missing a digit…"

            "A digit?" Elaine wrinkled her nose.

            "You know, a finger. That's what they call it in a numerical way," Justin continued. "His left pinkie got cut off, if you haven't noticed. I can't say what, but I bet it's another trend from a movie that was copied out while the culprits were doing these murders."

            "Well, I don't remember any movies that showed the killer collects human body parts as trophies," Judith scratched her chin. "Except the movie 'The Bone Collector', but then again, the killer collected bones."

            "Well, whatever it is, we've got to put an end to this thing," Jonathan voiced out. "I've been receiving news that the people out there are getting restless and demand to know who has been doing all these murders. Even the press are hot on our heels now."

            "Woah! Now that's what I call a serious publicity effect," Elaine wiped off an imaginary sweat from her brow. "Alright, now that men is out of the question, what are our leads to…"

            "Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt your meeting," Elaine's words were interrupted by the secretary coming in with a cordless phone in his hand. In this CSI office, they have an unofficial policy that people should work in pairs (man and woman) to cultivate teamwork, and secretaries were of no exception. 

            "Don't people knock anymore? State your business," Jonathan said authoritatively.

            "Mr. David, sir, there's a phone call for you, from a guy called Thomas Chung. He said it's really urgent," the secretary said as he handed the cordless phone to Jonathan.

            "Isn't that one of your gun-mates?" Judith asked, surprised. "What's he gotta say?"

            "I have no idea," Jonathan shrugged before answering the call. "Hello, Jon here. What's up? Yeah, uh-huh…What? Are you sure? Where? OK, I'll be right over."

            "What is it, Mark David? Another case?" Judith asked as soon as Jonathan hung up the phone.

            "Yup, we have a multiple crime scene tonight, and I guess we need some help from all of you," Jonathan replied as he got his gear together. "Some of you will have to go to Putra Jaya. There's an accident happening at one of the junction. The rest will have to follow me to our famous Mr. Lionel Han's high school. Which do you guys prefer?"

            So, after much wondering and pondering, Judith, Rachel and Justin decided to go to Lionel Han's high school. The rest--Elaine and Rebecca--decided to take the Putra Jaya. After gathering everything they need for their crime scene investigation, they went on their separate ways.

                                                                                                *

            "Woah! Now that is what I call an accident scene!"

            Elaine and Rebecca have reached the junction at Putra Jaya where the accident was said to happen. Many reporters and civilians were crowding a few feet from the mangled car trying to get a glimpse of the victim inside. From far, our CSI agents could see that the mangled car was a Proton Iswara. Cameras were flashing and loud chatter among the people could be heard. There was a newscaster broadcasting the scene live and was talking to the cameraman. As soon as she caught sight of Elaine and Rebecca who were trying to squeeze their way through the crowd to do their job, she quickly rushed up to them.

            "You must be CSI agents Elaine Majon and Rebecca Liew, right? Can you tell us what is going on here?" Her questioning was beginning to attract other reporters to come and ask questions.

            "We don't know yet," Rebecca replied. "That's why we're called in here to check it out."

            "Is there a possibility that this could be connected to the other cases known as the 'Urban Legend Copycat Killer'?" another reporter asked. Soon more questions poured out.

            "Have you found out who the culprit is?"

            "Which urban legend is it this time?"

            "Have you have any suspects? Any leads to this case?"

            "Is there anything you can do to find out the killer and stop these killings?"

            "Sorry, guys, but we've got work to do," Elaine replied nonchalantly as she flicked her half-finished cigarette at one of the reporters that irritated her. "We have no comments on this issue."

            With more reporters hounding behind their wake, Elaine and Rebecca flashed their badges at one of the police in charge and were let in. 

            "What's the story here, men?" Elaine asked.

            "One serious accident, ma'am," the police in charge answered. "That Proton Iswara just rammed itself onto that huge tree over there and got itself really mushed up. The two victims in the car didn't survive. We're trying to get an ID out of them. We're suspecting maybe drunk driving."

            "Thanks," Rebecca said. "We'll take it from here."

            As they waited for the paramedics to take out the victims and carry them out of the car and into the ambulance, Elaine turned to Rebecca and asked, "What are the chances of people surviving this kind of car crash?"

            "Second to nil," Rebecca replied, wrinkling her nose. "The tire tracks looked as if this car has traveled at about 80km/hr and that tree he just hit is like, what, almost as hard as steel? Judging by the tree's growth and the thickness of the trunk, there is no way he could survive this." 

            "Guess you're right. That bonnet of that car is like corn beef. Remind me never to buy a Proton Iswara ever."

            "Anyway, did you hear what the reporter said earlier: 'Urban Legend Copycat Killer'? What was that about? How did they come up with such names?"

            "Publicity gimmick," Elaine replied, putting on her plastic gloves. "Makes a news more interesting and get people coming back for more. It's a news thing. Come on, let's get to work."

            Rebecca and Elaine soon got into their ever familiar CSI routine: checking for car faulty, sabotage and the like. As usual, Rebecca wound the loose end of the red ribbon around her neck. While Elaine was checking the inside of the car, Rebecca noticed something and gestured her to come.

            "Hey, Elaine, take a look at this."

            "What is it?" Elaine said as she moved towards the boot of the car where Rebecca was kneeling in front of.

            "Check out these crunches. What does this tell you?"

            Elaine looked closely and saw that there were forced in dent marks on the boot of the car and on one particular spot of the dent was a rusty-looking mark. Rebecca took out her camera and took a picture of it.

            "Looks like rust," Elaine replied as she scraped a sample of it into an evidence bag. "It seems as if someone forced this Proton to hit the tree, and by the number of dents, he must've done it over and over again just to make sure his victim go corn beef together with the bonnet."

            "Exactly. There is no way that someone in a car accident hitting headlong towards a tree would get dents in the back. And this much dents too for the fact." Rebecca deduced.

            "Which means…"

            "This is no drunk driving accident. This is murder." 

            "But how did this perpetrator do it without being noticed? Surely someone would see one car banging another car and forcing it to a tree." Elaine asked, surprised.

            "This is quite a remote junction. Not much people pass this junction, especially at night. Pedestrians don't even dare go around here." Rebecca took a quick look around. "Anything can happen without being noticed and it'll take until morning before anyone knows what's going on. How's about retracing those steps?"

            Elaine nodded and, with small evidence number tags in her hand, she stepped carefully along the road following the tire tracks. Rebecca, after done taking pictures of the car, followed behind Elaine taking pictures of the parts where she laid the evidence number tags. (**A/N: Imagine that this scene, the crime was replayed, like in the CSI series**) Elaine came across a few tracks that indicated a struggle and an abrupt halt, and she tagged them. After about a few miles down the road, she realized that she was running out of number tags.

            "Darn, I'm fresh out. Got anything to replace number tags?"

            "Well, I have a few chalks," Rebecca said, grinning with a few chalks in her hand. "I carry them around just in case there happens to be a body so that I can draw the shape around it. He he he…"

            "That is sick," Elaine sweatdropped as she took one chalk from Rebecca. She continued numbering the road until she finally came across tire tracks that came from both the way they were walking and the opposite way. It was like some other car--the culprit's car, maybe--came from another direction and swerved around to chase the Proton Iswara. Rebecca got the cue and took a picture of the other tire tracks found.

            "These tracks look like they come from an old version of the Proton. A Proton Saga maybe," Rebecca commented.

            "I guess this is where the chase began," Elaine agreed. "Let's go back to the crime scene and check for the rest of our so-called Proton Saga's tire tracks. He has to go somewhere."

            "Are you mad? He could have brought the whole darn car back home, and that could be miles! Are you suggesting we follow it until the end?"

            "No one is dumb enough to bring a wrecked car back home, especially when he had used it to bang another car. Come on, let's go before the trail gets cold."

            So saying, Elaine and Rebecca headed back towards the crime scene and this time, they took the other road. Sure enough, there were the 'Proton Saga' tire tracks on the road and like before, Elaine continued to number them and Rebecca continued to take pictures of them. They walked down the road for quite a long while until finally, at about 4 miles down the road, they saw something that looked like a car. They quickened their pace and sure enough, there was a very old Proton Saga with the bonnet pretty mangled up, but still intact enough to be driven for so long a mile. And as they have hoped, the rusty metallic Proton Saga logo of the bonnet matched the rust in the evidence bag.

            "Looks like we've found our murder weapon," Elaine said as she started searching the car for clues.

            "If you call this a murder weapon," Rebecca joined in the search, "that has got to be the biggest murder weapon I have ever seen."

                                                                                                *

            The rest of the CSI team, namely Jonathan, Judith, Rachel and Justin, has finally reached SM Victoria Institution where Lionel studied. It was an all boys' school and it was evident that they were going to expect dozens upon dozens of boys, except for Form 6, which was the only grade with girls.

            As soon as they got out of the car, like Elaine and Rebecca, they were swamped with reporters who got there before them. They were showered with questions about the Urban Legend Copycat murders and what will the authorities do about this. Jonathan, as head of the crime lab, waved their questions away and refused to give any comments. Justin and Rachel, who seldom go out to crime scenes, were quite intrigued at how hot and widespread this case was getting to. They flashed their badges and were let in.

            "Hey, Thomas," Jonathan greeted Thomas who was giving instructions to his other gun-mates Aaron and Leslie. They turned around and gave him high-fives.

            "Hey, Jon," Thomas grinned. "Glad you could make it."

            "What are you guys doing here? I thought you SWAT team people wouldn't be involved with petty crimes like this."

            "We do now," Aaron replied, sighing as he ran his fingers through his hair. "After the murder of 3 little children and 3 teenagers all using the ever familiar urban legends, the authorities are not taking any chances. They are considering this person very dangerous and could be a threat to the public. They are treating him as a cold-blooded serial killer and are recruiting people from the higher authorities to nail down this criminal."

            "Her," Jonathan corrected. "We have reasons to believe it's a her."

            "In other words, they brought you guys in," Judith said as she popped a Wrigley's Spearmint gum into her mouth.

            "You must be the famous bakasaru Jonathan's been talking about," Leslie said.

            "Guilty as charged."

            "She's not such a bad package as I thought," Aaron rubbed his chin, eyeing her with interest. "You sure got good taste, Jon."

            Jonathan gave them a warning She's-not-my-girlfriend look while Judith acted as if she didn't hear anything. Rachel decided to get right down to business, "What's the story here, guys?"

            "Well, apparently we have a double crime here," Thomas replied, jerking his head towards the hostel. As he led the CSI agents towards the hostel, he continued explaining. "The victim's dorm mates found him dead at the hallway with his throat slit and another one was hung from the frame of the bathroom door in front of his disemboweled dog."

            "Disemboweled dog?" Justin asked, getting familiar with this kind of case.

            "Yup. They say that this guy has been rearing his dog secretly in his dorm and his other dorm mates were kind enough not to reveal it to the teachers. They have found a weird writing in blood on the wall though, saying…"

            "'Humans can lick too', right?" Rachel asked.

            "Uh, yeah, how did you…?"

            "Another urban legend," Judith replied. "Owner of a dog heard a strange noise and reached for the dog which licked her hand, and found the next morning the dog dead and words written in the dog's blood 'Humans can lick too'. You can guess who's been doing the licking."

            "Now that is sick," Leslie's face screwed up in disgust.

            "What about the hallway victim?" Aaron asked.

            "My guess would be the urban legend where two roommates were going back to their hostel and one of them still had some place else to go," Rachel, the Human Library, explained.  "The latter hit the hay and woke up in the middle of the night hearing scratching sounds at the door. The next morning the latter found out that the former roommate was dead in the hallway and was scratching the door trying to call for help."

            "Well, that's what we've got from the victims' dorm mates," Thomas replied and gestured the police guarding the crime scene to let them in. "You guys really did your homework."

            "That's what we CSIs do," Jonathan replied before turning to his co-workers. "Alright, Rach, you and I go check on the hallway kid. Justin, you and Jude can go check the dog case. I think our bakasaru is more interested in gutted dogs than slit throats. And Jude, spit out that chewing gum."

            Judith ignored him, chewing deliberately loud and amusing the SWAT team members. Jonathan sighed in defeat and they went on their separate ways. Thomas, Aaron and Leslie were beginning to think that they're going to see more amusing things between these two bickering colleagues.

                                                                                                * 

            As soon as Judith and Justin reached the dorm with the dead dog, they could see the dorm mates sitting at their double-decker beds, looking really ashen as some of the police were trying to question them about what they saw. Our CSI agents flashed their badges at the police before getting down to work.

            "What's the ID of our dog lover?" Judith asked one of the policemen.

            "His name was Terry Soong and his dog was named Jasper," the police replied. "His dorm mate who slept on the top bunk was the first one to discover his body. He claimed that Terry was an early waker, always waking up earlier before anyone else." 

            "What time did he usually wake up?" Justin asked.

            "Mostly at about 3 or 4 in the morning. He heard Terry getting off the bed and he went back to sleep. He didn't hear anything else. When he woke up later and saw Terry's hanging body, he immediately blacked out and is still unconscious. The bathroom is over there, detectives."

            The dorm had only one bathroom to share and it was left untouched for Judith and Justin to check. Which means that the gruesome dead bodies of the dog and the owner were still hanging at the exact spot when they were found (Gross!). Sure enough, there were bloody writings on the wall that bear the scary words **_HUMANS CAN LICK TOO_**. Judith took one look at the blue face of the owner and the noose around his neck and said, "At least he didn't suffer."

            "How do you know?" Justin asked while he was taking blood samples from the dog and the writings on the wall.

            "Try smell his face."

            Justin did and his face lit up in understanding, "It's chloroform."

            "Uh-huh. The culprit made him sleep first so that he won't make a sound, then she looped the noose around his neck and let him die in his sleep hanging there."

            "She really followed everything here in detail," Justin said as he pointed at the gutted dog. "She followed exactly how the dog in the urban legend was disemboweled and wrote the exact words on the wall. She must've taken the effort to even lick Terry's hand just like in the legend. That's sick, man."

            "I just don't understand how the culprit could ever do this without leaving any evidence around, not even a strand of hair," Judith said, a little frustrated as she powdered the place for any prints. "And I can't seem to shake off the feeling that it's a he who did this crime. I mean who in the world could possibly pull a rope that was hanging a 7 feet 4 guy if it's not a guy?"

            "I dunno yet," Justin said as he took pictures of the whole place. "Unless she's been working out or something. You'll never know."

            "I still think it's a guy," Judith insisted before Justin suddenly snapped the camera at her.

            "Cheese!"

            "Hey, what was that for?"

            "For fun," Justin grinned. "Don't worry. I'll separate this section from the rest of the film."

            "Weird," Judith muttered, making some last minute checks before gesturing one of the policemen to remove Terry from his hung-up position.

            "Err…Jude, I was thinking…well…after investigating this batch of evidence, if you're not going to anything later tonight, would it be OK if you hang out with me?" Justin asked sheepishly.

            "What for?" Judith asked, curious.

            "Well, you know, just hang out and, uh, go watch a late night movie or something. There's this new horror movie called 'McCall's Boys' and I was wondering if you could…"

            "Are you asking me out on a date, Justin?"

            "Well, if you wanna put it that way…yeah, I am."

            Judith stared at Justin for a while without a word, making Justin feel awkward. He wasn't good in reading people's faces like detectives do when they interrogate their suspects, and he sure couldn't read what was going on through Judith's mind. Come to think of it, no one can.

            "I'll think about it," Judith said finally.

            "Is that a yes?" Justin asked, hopeful.

            "I said I'll think about it, OK?"

            "Alright. Take your time."

            Sometimes, he wished that she would actually give him a straight answer.

                                                                                                *

            Meanwhile, Jonathan and Rachel were checking out on the dead student in the hallway. There were quite a number of other boys and a few girls from Form 6 crowding around the area to see how bad the situation was but was shooed away by the police on guard. Jonathan asked one of the policemen questioning the dorm mates to turn the face-down boy upright so that he could check out the damages.

            "What did you say his name was?" Jonathan asked.

            "Kevin Pang," the police replied. He looked more of a rookie than a pro. "We received a call from one of the kids here reporting about his case and then a few minutes later it was another call talking about that dog owner case."

            "I see."

            "He was right out there, trying to call for help and all we did was just locked the door and went back to sleep until he's dead!" one of the dorm mates cried in devastation. "It's all our fault he's dead! It's all our fault!"

            "We didn't know it was him!" another dorm mate said. "We thought it was some kind of a cat. We get loads of cats around here and you don't know when they sneak in and jump on you. We…We just…We just thought…"

            "There's nothing else you can do now," Rachel tried to pacify the dorm mates who were beating themselves up about this. "It's not entirely your fault. Just calm down. Did he say anything before he left the dorm last night? Anything suspicious?"

            "Well, he said he was going to go out and meet somebody," the first dorm mate replied. "But he didn't tell us where."

            "Did he say who he was going to meet?"

            "No, not even that. We assumed he was going out on a secret midnight date with one of the girls, so we didn't wait up for him."

            "Alright, thanks," Rachel said. She went towards Jonathan who taking blood samples and asked, "Well, any leads?"

            "Nope. No fingerprints except the victim's, no other foreign footprints, nothing. He's getting better and better. And the slit wound are just Nicholas's, clean yet not too deep. Enough to make him choke in his own blood and suffer a long, painful death."

            "Ouch!" Rachel wrinkled her nose. "Now that's gotta hurt!"

            While Jonathan continued to check the body, Rachel looked around in search of clues. She noticed a long trail of blood from the victim's dorm down along the hallway. She remembered reading in urban legend that the roommate had dragged herself down the hallway all the way to her room. She decided to follow the trail while taking a few pictures in the process. She was so engrossed in following the trail of blood that she wasn't paying attention to where it was leading. When the trail finally stopped, she looked up and was quite surprised to see where she was. She phoned Jonathan and told him to get to where she was quick.

            She was actually in a basketball court.

A/N: Oh no!! This has to mean that the murderer is starting to target the rest of the basketball team members! Who exactly is the killer?! Read on to find out! ^_^ Reviews plz! 


	14. The Triangle

A/N: Mystery thickens and the culprit is still at large. Will the CSI agents find it out in time? Keep on reading to find out!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA

            The CSI gang was back at the crime lab checking out the evidence they got from the crime scene. Justin were pretty much done with all the bodies from the school and the Putra Jaya accident spot, since they have already analyzed most of the stuff directly at the crime scene, and was typing in the report. They have received an ID on the victims of the car accident (or murder) as twin brothers Derek and Desmond. While Jonathan tried to find out more about the twins, the girls—Rebecca, Judith, Elaine and Rachel—were inspecting the cars Elaine and Rebecca found at Putra Jaya. Judith and Rachel did the Proton Saga and Elaine and Rebecca did the Iswara.

            "So what have you got over there, Jude?" Elaine asked from the boot of the Iswara.

            "Nothing much here," Judith replied, dusting for fingerprints. "There are no fingerprints or hair or anything that's here for us to find. This murderer is seriously a pro. He's getting better everyday."

            "She," Rachel corrected.

            "Well, I still have that gut feeling that it could be a 'he'," Judith said indignantly.

            "She's got a point, you know," Rebecca agreed. "I mean, it could be Cliff who murdered the Han siblings and Gary did confess in murdering Cliff. They're all males."

            "Besides, you said it yourself, right, Jude? That this is some sort of a chain murder and all," Elaine backed her up. "Who else could've done this if it's not a guy?"

            "She could be the mastermind behind all this," Rachel said. "Don't underestimate the fury and intellectual of women."

            "Yeah, well, not all women are as smart and vengeful as you are though," Judith commented. She took a look at the license plate number of the Proton Saga and exclaimed, "Hey, I recognize this car!"

            "You do?" Rebecca asked, curious.

            "Yeah, I've seen this license plate number. This car belongs to my neighbour who lives just across the street! He had reported it stolen a couple of days ago!"

            "That old car? He still keeps this thing?"

            "Well, I heard he got this car from his dad for his 20th birthday. He practically worshipped this car. Loves it more than his wife," Judith grinned. "Looks like he'll be in for a serious heart attack when I tell him what happened to his car."

            "Guess that rules your neighbour out as a suspect," Rebecca replied. "One thing bothers me though."

            "Why? What is it?" Elaine asked.

            "Proton Saga is the first of its kind and Proton Iswara is somewhat the Proton Saga's next of kin. It should be much tougher than its brother, so why is it that the damages on the bonnet of this Iswara so intense?"

            "It's a modified car," Rachel voiced out.

            "How would you know?" Rebecca asked, although it is pretty much a dumb question for the Human Library.

            "Proton Iswara-s are built to be much stronger and tougher than the original version. That's the basic concept for all cars and their next of kin. So logically speaking they wouldn't be able to break or dent that easily like the old version. But when it comes to car races, they usually make their car bonnets lighter so that it can speed faster and all. Usually made out of carbon-fiber metal. I've analyzed a little bit about that mangled bonnet. It is the same material as I've mentioned just now."

            "So that means that this pair of twins had a tendency to go for either joyrides or car-racing in the middle of the night. I knew that these races would lead to an end like this."

            "Did you say before that this Proton Saga rammed that Iswara to the tree and that the place it occurred was at the remote junction of Putra Jaya?" Judith asked without looking up.

            "Uh-huh," Elaine replied. "What? You know something?"

            "If my suspicions are correct, it could be another urban legend."

            "We thought of that too, since we've been hounded by the press about this," Rebecca noted. "But which urban legend is it?"

            "The headlights urban legend." Rachel replied. "The book said that to be able to become a gang member in the olden days, you have to drive with your headlights off and kill the first person to signal the headlights at you."

            "OK, now that is seriously sick," Rebecca grimaced. "This guy is way too hooked on that urban legend thing."

            "Girl."

            "Whatever!"

            "Can't find any evidence over here," Elaine concluded her inspection.

            "Same here," Judith voiced out.

            "Things sure get weirder and weirder," Rachel muttered, believing even more that she made the right choice of profession.

            "Another one bites the dust."

            Jonathan sighed and rubbed his temples as he closed the file he was reading. He had never expected that today would be a hectic day. It was very rare for them to have a multiple case that actually linked together, not to mention being hounded by the press demanding an explanation behind all these murders in the past few weeks. It's never easy to answer pressing questions from relentless reporters and believe me, Jonathan and the rest of the crew sure had a hard time trying to avoid them.

            He had just received further ID from all the victims both from SM Victoria Institution and the Putra Jaya accident scene and discovered that they all share one thing in common: they were some of the members of Lionel Han's basketball team. Him and all his co-workers' fear came true—the murderer was beginning to target the rest of the team. He was considering Rebecca's suggestion of giving the rest of the basketball team protective custody when he saw Judith and Elaine coming in.

            "Anything about the car?" Jonathan asked.

            "No prints as usual," Elaine replied as she lit a cigarette. Judith grinned naughtily and snatched the cigarette to take a whiff of it, earning a bonk on the shoulder from an annoyed Elaine. Jonathan groaned.

            "I'm surrounded by idiots."

            "Well, you won't think I'm much of an idiot when you hear that the Proton Iswara's bonnet is made out of carbon-fiber material," Judith said, folding her arms across her chest.

            "That's only used when you want to make speed racing cars," Jonathan was surprised. "Why would it be on the Iswara?"

            "Duh, obviously because our Mr. Derek and Desmond has a knack for car races," Elaine rolled her eyes.

            "That means the killer must have an idea about their car to dare ram them up onto that tree," Jonathan rubbed his chin. "Good work, girls. Carry on."

            "Sorry, Mark David," Judith replied as she packed her stuff. "As much as I want to carry on, I have to go out."

            "I'm thinking of getting something to eat myself," Elaine agreed. "Besides, there's nothing for us to check anyway and we have no leads."

            "Go out?" Jonathan asked, curious. Elaine grinned inwardly. She could tell from the tone of his voice and the look on his face that there was something he didn't like about Judith going out.

            "Yeah, you know," Judith replied nonchalantly, adjusting her hair. "As in go out, grab a bite, watch a movie, shopping, you know."

            "I know that, doy!" Jonathan groaned exasperatedly. "I meant by who are you going out with?"

            "None of your business."

            "Well, I'm your superior and I have to know where you're going if you're not carrying on with the work…"

            "Jude, are you ready? Can we go now?" Justin's head popped from behind the door of the main crime office where the trio was. Elaine lit up in understanding and thought she saw Jonathan looking slightly darkly at him.

            "Yeah, I'm all done," Judith replied, waving goodbye at her friends without looking at them. Elaine waited until the duo disappeared out of sight before turning to Jonathan.

            "Hey, Jon. Wanna go get some grub?"

            "Not hungry," Jonathan muttered before he returned to his files pretending to be very interested in them. Elaine shrugged as she put out the cigarette butt and left the room, trying hard not to burst out laughing until she's _really_ far from earshot.

            Jonathan continued to flip over the papers in the file, his eyes on the paper but his mind somewhere else in oblivion. Somehow he just couldn't concentrate on what he was supposed to read through. After a few moments of staring blankly at the paper (and realizing that there isn't any evidence to pinpoint a suspect anyway), he stuffed them all into his drawer and went out of the crime office.

            Judith and Justin were seen walking out of the shopping plaza's mini cinema after watching the horror movie 'McCall's Boys' Justin mentioned before, discussing about it excitedly.

            "That movie was so cool!" Judith exclaimed as she sucked the last drop of her Coke. "And to think that it was the youngest son who's been doing all the black magic and killing people! He's like, what, 9 years old? His acting is good!"

            "Well, that's the interesting thing," Justin replied. "Kids nowadays. Never underestimate them, ever."

            "Yeah. Think of the things a kid would do for revenge, especially what we're facing now. And I thought USA has the highest crime rate."

            While Judith and Justin continued discussing hotly about the movie, at a distance away unknown to them, Jonathan was following them from behind. He refused to admit to himself that he was jealous about them—although the thought did come—but he still couldn't help wanting to find out what was going on between them. This thought bit him tirelessly in his head and he just had to satisfy his curiosity.

            The rest of the evening was spent pretty normally at typical places: window-shopping, going to the arcades, grab a bite at a food stall, checking out books sold at bookstores and looking for new on-sale VCD-s and finally sitting at a café enjoying a cup of coffee.

            "So I heard you girls have been checking out the cars. Any luck?" Justin asked, sipping his cappuccino.

            "Nope. None as usual," Judith sighed as she put down her cup of latte. "We're beginning to think that we're trying to find a ghost killer, and an expert at that."

            "No ghost killer can kill with such precise detail and would take so much trouble finding out which legend fits who."

            "True."

            "Uhh, Jude," Justin said sheepishly as he scratched his chin. "I don't wanna pry but…you and the Chief…well, are you guys still on?"

            "Not really," Judith replied. She didn't seem to take offence about his question. "We're still friends, but we're not 'on' to each other."

            "Oh, well…That means you guys have no strings attached now, right?"

            "Uh-huh. No strings attached whatsoever."

            Justin smiled inwardly, seemingly relieved. Jonathan, who was sitting a table behind them, could tell that he had something going on in his head.

            "Do you, well, do you still have feelings for him though?" Jonathan heard Justin asked tentatively.

            Judith eyed Justin for a while and circled her finger on the cup, then muttered, "Justin, what exactly are you trying to say to me? You didn't ask me out just to watch a movie, did you?"

            Justin hesitated, a red flush ran through his fair cheeks. Scratching his head awkwardly, he replied, "Well…uh…I dunno…I mean, if you're not having any…intimate feelings for the Chief, I was thinking…maybe you and could go…uh, you know…"

            "Steady?" Judith finished his sentence. Hesitantly, Justin nodded. Jonathan looked as if he was going to plant a bullet on someone's head. Judith smirked and shook her head.

            "Nah, I can't say I'm ready to go another extra mile between us."

            "Yeah, I guessed," Justin replied, slightly disappointed. "You still have feelings for him, right?"

            "Well, I can't say I have much deep feelings for him, but…I can say one thing: he's someone who can be two things at one time. He can be unbearable for one time, then he can be insatiable next. He can be boring, then interesting the next. He can be intolerable first, then later you just can't get enough of him. That's what I like about him. He's one of a kind. I never regret that I used to be with him."

            Justin smiled wryly as he patted her shoulder. Jonathan, who had heard every word, was stunned. Was that what she really felt? Was she really saying it from the depth of her heart? Did she really mean what she said? What exactly was she trying to imply really anyway? Before Jonathan could make sense of it all, he saw Judith stand up abruptly.

            "Take me to the nearest playground!"

            "Wha…?" Justin was quite taken aback.

            "Take me to the nearest playground! I wanna play the swing!" Judith repeated.

            "What for?"

            "It's been a while. I just wanna go back to my childhood side for a moment. Come on, let's go!"

            "Just the Jude we always know," Justin chuckled as he took her hand. "Come on, then. Playground it is."

            "Don't you think you're old enough to be out of this kiddy habit already?"

            Judith and Justin were in the playground and Judith was on the swing, practically enjoying the rush as she swung back and forth and demanding Justin to push her higher. Jonathan, who had decided that he had seen enough of this childishness, went back to the crime lab to do more research. Judith laughed out loud as she swung higher. Justin shook his head and sighed weakly—this CSI member certainly was someone very unpredictable.

            While she was swinging, Judith's eyes caught sight of the monkey bars. She saw some teenagers who were, like her, reliving their younger years by climbing and dangling over the monkey bars and laughing at people who couldn't hang on the bars more than 5 seconds. When one of them hung upside-down by his legs at the bars, Judith's mind suddenly clicked. The more she stared at the boy, the more her mind began to work. Once her mind suddenly came to a conclusion, she turned her head abruptly at Justin.

            "Justin, stop! Stop the swing!"

            Justin was so caught off guard that he stopped pushing the swing, resulting it to almost hit his face when it swung back. Justin got back to his senses quite immediately and grabbed the swing handles to stop the swing. As soon as it stopped, Judith jumped off.

            "We have to go back to the crime scene!" Judith suddenly voiced out in excitement.

            "Why? Which crime scene?"

            "The one in Alor Setar! The place where Cliff was found dead!"

            "Now?" Justin looked at his watch. "Why now? It's almost 1.30 a.m.!"

            "Yes, now. Right now, before I forget my theory."

            "What theory?" Justin asked he followed behind Judith to his car.

            "The theory of Cliff's murder. I think I have that figured out!"

            "What else is there to think of? They have already dismissed Gary's confession to murder because they assumed that he was dying and couldn't think straight. You didn't even record what he was saying—and the fact that he couldn't talk anyway. They've already deemed him innocent. Why now?"

            "Trust me on this. With this theory of mine, I bet they would be looking helter-skelter for the confession file on Gary he dismissed."

            As soon as they're at their crime scene where Cliff was killed, Judith immediately jumped off the car without even waiting for Justin to hit the brakes, practically ignoring Justin's horrified yell to be careful. She ran full speed towards the tree and recreated the image of Cliff's body in her mind. Justin came running after her breathlessly.

            "You are seriously suicidal, Jude! What is it that you see?"

            Judith didn't reply. She continued to stare at the tree, visualizing the crime scene, her trailing from the branches to the place where Cliff took a leak. She grabbed Justin's sleeve without a word and pulled him towards the tree.

            "Give me a boost," Judith ordered. Justin obliged, still puzzled about his co-workers mysterious attitude. Judith climbed up the tree and inched her way slowly towards the middle of the branch where Cliff was hung. She soon discovered that there were a few hay-like strings attached to the natural dents of the branch's skin, looking just like the material from the rope tied on Cliff's ankles. She held on tight to another branch above her and stretched over to see that there were tiny pieces of plastic stuck onto the branch opposite the one she was on. She took that and the hay-like strings and pocketed it in.

            "What do you see, Jude?" Justin asked anxiously from below.

            "Here's what happened," Judith gave her deduction. "On the night of the murder, Cliff sneaked off to have fun with the girl, but the steam was cut off when he had to take a leak. What he didn't know was that Gary was so used to his unorthodox habit that he knew Cliff was going to ditch them beforehand. Things were hectic there, so the other guys didn't know when Gary left to buy neon lights, so probably he went out about almost the same time Cliff snuck off with the girl and did the dirty work the mastermind had planned for him."

            "How did he do that, pray tell?"

            "He hid up here in the tree in waiting and he had the trap waiting for Cliff. He laid a noose on the ground that covered the place approximately where Cliff might stand to take a leak. While Cliff did his business, he quietly pulled the rope and let the noose tighten around Cliff's feet, descended quietly down the ground holding the loose end of the rope, came behind Cliff and slit his throat before pulling the rope with all his might until he was sure Cliff was hanging above the car. Which explains the dragging marks..."

            "Wait a second!" Justin stepped her deduction. "If Gary had been going up and down the tree to slit Cliff, why aren't there any footprints at the place where he was slit? If there weren't any footprints where Cliff was dragged, he should have left some there!"

            "Because," Judith said as she plucked a few very tiny pieces of cloth on the spot next to the hay-like strings, "he was wearing socks. Even if he had left any footprints there, it wouldn't be easy for us to trace it to him 'coz anyone could have the same size of feet he did. Besides toe prints don't exactly penetrate through socks."

            "But he couldn't climb trees! He had dislocated his knees many times and had quite a fracture on his thigh bone, making him unable to climb without help."

            "He didn't have to," Judith replied. "He had his hands. I found some plastic material on this branch here. He was wearing plastic gloves and he was swinging from branch to branch and was also hanging upside-down with his legs to disembowel Cliff."

            "That explains the absence of prints on the car," Justin said as he rubbed his chin in comprehension. "But how could he...?"

            "I've read his school records. Before he was in basketball, he was in gymnastics for a year or two. That's where he got all the dislocation and fractures. He was risking another injury on his knee to do this murder. If he had stayed hanging there longer, you would've found injuries on his body. Plus, with his expertise in going under cars, that explains the army knife between the exhaust pipe."

            "Darn!" Justin slapped his head. "Why didn't I check that one out?"

            "What happened, Justin?" Judith asked as she hung suddenly upside-down almost close to Justin's face, taking him by surprise. "I thought you're the best coroner in the crime lab."

            "Well, I'm not exactly perfect..." Justin replied, looking away with a flushed face. Judith grinned mischievously, not realizing that the branch she was hanging from was beginning to break. When she realized what happened, it was too late. The branch snapped and she fell headlong towards the ground, landing on top of Justin, her lips dangerously close to his. Justin blushed even worse as he realized his eyes were staring straight into Judith's dark-brown ones. Judith smiled and gave Justin a peck on the lips—a sort of friendly kiss.

            "My hero."

A/N: OK...so, which couple do you prefer? Judith with Justin or Judith with Jonathan? You decide, coz I have just no idea. Reviews plz!


	15. Outside the Crime Lab, Into the Memories

A/N: We have seen somewhat the personal side of this love-triangled CSIs, now let's check out the rest of the CSI members and how their personal lives are.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                                        CSI: ASIA

            The whole housing estate of Taman Sentosa was pretty much silent with a life of its own. Everyone was minding their own businesses, whether it is watching TV, doing their homework, chatting with friends either on the internet or the telephone or just plain snoozing on the bed.

            But then of course not everyone was asleep and peacefully doing their own businesses. Elaine's home was pretty much hectic and all as she could be seen going back and forth from her wardrobe to her bags. Her parents were standing at her bedroom door trying to reason with her.

            "Elaine, stop it!" her father demanded. "You've got everything you wanted. You wanted to indulge yourself in music and we let you take that chance. You want to have that filthy, dangerous job at the CSI team and we let you go there. You have a room of your own, a piano of your own, a computer of your and all the things you need. Why are you being so ungrateful?!"

            "Ungrateful? How can I be grateful when you are forcing me to marry this guy I barely even like anymore!" Elaine exclaimed, throwing her jeans into her bag. "He was just a high school crush and nothing more! I have tastes, you know! You can't let me stay with one guy for the rest of my life when I don't have any feelings for him anymore!"

            "Don't you say that about Peter," her mother scolded. "He is a rich, decent man with a very good education background and a wealthy family that supports him. He is religious and goes to church diligently, unlike you who always skip church nowadays ever since you took that horrible job."

            "Mom, he still lives with his parents, for crying out loud! At this age, he would've asked his father to buy him a house somewhere nice and grand and have a life of his own! He even carried on with the same old dull food and beverage business his father and his forefathers before him have been running! And he does nothing but talk about business and money. Does this sound like a decent man to you?"

            "At least he's a loyal kind of man."

            "Yeah, right. And boring."

            "Oh, and I suppose your outlaw boyfriend is decent," her father challenged as he took out Elaine's belongings from her bag, only to be put back in again by an exasperated-looking Elaine.

            "Of course. Why do you think I like him?"

            "Elaine, this guy rides a motorbike all day long with nowhere to go. This kind of guy creates road kill on the streets, don't you know that?"

            "At least he's normal, unlike some people I know."

            "And, for the record, he is only a basketball player. How much do you think a basketball player can earn throughout his life? Do you think he can take care of you then if he stopped playing basketball?"

            "We both can manage. I have a job too. I can support him for the time being if he can't play."

            "I refuse to see my daughter feeding a man!" her mother exclaimed. "This is simply not the women's way! Men are always the bread-winner of the family and I will not..."

            "There you go again, Mom!" Elaine yelled. "It's always tradition this, tradition that! You never seem to care whether I have evolved or not! All you want me to do is just sit in the house slaving all day with housework and waiting on a husband that probably doesn't even know that I exist! Is that what you want me to be, a sitting duck playing house all day? I don't think I wanna end up like you, Mom!"

            "Don't you give that tone to your mother, young lady!" her father pointed an accusing finger at her. "You know perfectly well that whatever your mother say is right."

            "Yeah, right! Like I'm gonna believe that!" Elaine snorted as she threw in a box filled with packets of Virginia Light cigarettes into her bag. Her parents stared at the cigarettes in horror. Her father took one packet and held it in front of Elaine's nonchalant face.

            "What is this? What the hell is _this_?!"

            "A Virginia Light cigarette pack," Elaine snatched the packet away from her father. "What do you think it is, Tic-Tacs?"

            "How could you...How could you be smoking this...this filthy..."

            "There are loads you don't know about me, Dad," Elaine replied as she zipped up her bags. She took out one cigarette and lit it in front of her horrified parents. She didn't bother to hide it anymore. She was a grown girl now and none of her parents' old-fashioned words ever mattered to her anymore. As she took a whiff, she heard the horn of the motorbike honking. She looked out of the window and saw her beau with his Suzuki motorbike in waiting. Elaine smiled and waved at him before taking her bags.

            "Well, my ride is here. Gotta go now. See ya."

            "Wait just a minute here, young lady," her father blocked her way. "You are not leaving this house and you are not going to go anywhere with that uncivilized man."

            "Now where have I seen this scene before, hmm..." Elaine put out an exaggerated pose, pretending to think back. "Oh, yes, I remember. This is just the way it looked when I was just a little kid in primary school. You locked me up in the house whenever both of you want to go out and told the servant to keep an eye on me. I never get to go out, I never get to hang out with my friends or even my neighbours and I certainly never get any freedom. Gee, Dad, what a great childhood you gave me!"

            "I told you, Elaine, and I'm telling you one last time," her father said in gritted teeth. "You listen very carefully: you are not going..."

            "No, _you_ listen!" Elaine pointed an accusing finger at her father, the burning cigarette nearly hitting him between the eyes. "All my life you have been keeping me in this house without any further contact with the outside world! You never let me go out and you certainly never gave me happiness! You practically used me to gain recognition from your other relatives and friends! You didn't even give me time to mourn for my friend when she was shot that day at the concert! You just swept me right back into the stage the next day and ordered me to continue performing even though my heart was breaking into a million pieces! You insist on sending me anywhere I want to go and you never even try to let me experience things by myself! I'm like a caged bird here! It took me ages to convince you to let me take that CSI job and I finally decided to do it myself, whether you liked it or not. If it weren't for my best friend Judith, I would've gone insane by now!"

            "I always knew that Judith is a troublemaker..." her mother muttered but was cut short by Elaine's snap.

            "Don't you dare say anything about my friend, Mom! She showed me what was like in the real world, not some old-fashion fairytale you wish I would be. You didn't give me everything I need. You gave me everything that you _thought_ I need. I don't need all this junk you put into my head; I need to live a normal life just like everybody else! Even a decent friend like Rachel said that this is not a human life, and it sure is a far cry from either Judith or my boyfriend's life. I'm sick and tired of all this crap, you hear me, I am _sick_ and _tired_ of this shit! Now, if you'll excuse me, I got a life to live. A _real_ life."

            So saying, she bumped her way past her parents and marched down the stairs towards the front door, where her boyfriend Rex Kong was waiting. Any modern-minded person could see that he was a real hunk and a really cool guy, with black, shiny ebony hair almost like Aaron Kwok's haircut and magnificent blue eyes. Actually, come to think of it, he was a Rukawa Kaede look-a-like. His height and built proved him to be a true, professional basketball player. He took some of Elaine's bags and gave her an I'll-wait-for-you look before taking them to his bike. As Elaine started searching for her shoes, she heard her father stomping his foot angrily, trying to catch her attention. Elaine turned around and gave him a cold look.

            "If you ever set one foot out of that front door, you will be disowned," her father threatened. "You hear me? You'll never be our daughter again for the rest of your life!"

            Elaine didn't reply. She threw her half-finished cigarette onto the marble floor and took out her shoe. She wore them and, before leaving, turned to them and said, "If you don't start changing your seriously old-fashioned ways, I don't I will ever come back to this house."

            Those were her last words before she bounded off towards Rex's bike and rode with him out towards the direction of Kuala Lumpur in the dead of the night.

            Rebecca had just got home after a rather tiring night of recording down her file work on her find on the Proton Iswara. Out of habit, she touched her neck to make sure that the ribbon her boyfriend Cyril gave her was there. After making sure, she let out a satisfied sigh and handed upstairs.

            There hadn't been a day gone by without the red ribbon around her neck. It was like a permanent leash on her. There was one incident when she was studying for her A-Levels, where she was working on an experiment during Physics class. She forgot to wind the loose end of the ribbon around her neck and it got caught on one of the harp edges of the experiment woodwork. As she had tied it loosely, she didn't realize that it had strung off her neck until halfway through her English class, which was about an hour later after Physics. Needless to say, she went barging out of the class and searched high and low for her ribbon, regardless of the fact that the English class was still on. When she thought it was lost for good and was losing all hope, her junior who so happen to find the ribbon during his Physics class returned it back to her. Getting detention for running out of class was no big deal for her—at least she got her ribbon back.

            And it's not surprising when the knot on the ribbon became tighter and the habit of winding the loose end around her neck became like a religious thing to do for her.

            The first thing she did once she was upstairs was removing all her clothes and filling up the bath tub with warm water. She took off the ribbon around her neck and tied it on the towel hanger, exactly where she could see it. She then poured in the bubble bath solution and waited until the tub was all bubbly before dunking herself slowly into the lukewarm water, relaxing her body to absorb every little warmth of the bath.

            Her gaze shifted back to the ribbon tied on the towel hanger. She remembered exactly when she got that ribbon. It was 3 years ago on 16th July. They were at the KL Airport and Cyril was about to leave to Vancouver. That time Rebecca didn't look too happy to see him go. She maybe optimistic about a lot of things, but she sure wasn't looking at the bright side of this.

            "Why are you down, Becky?" she remembered Cyril asking. "You should be happy for me. I'm getting a good job like you always wanted."

            "Yeah, but...I didn't want us to be away from each other."

            "Hey, it's OK. No biggie. I'll write to you and call you from time to time."

            "Promise?" Rebecca was still doubtful.

            "I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die."

            Rebecca smiled as Cyril crossed his heart to prove his point. She didn't know why, but as soon as she smiled, tears started pouring out of her eyes. She couldn't seem to control the aching feeling in her heart with the fact that she wouldn't be seeing Cyril for a long time. She hugged the teddy bear she was going to give him as a farewell gift close to her chest.

            "You OK, Becky?" Cyril asked, concerned.

            "I hate to send you off with a smile. I really hate it..." Rebecca sobbed, not wanting to look at him with her sodden eyes.

            Cyril scratched his chin. He hated to go and leave his girlfriend so heartbroken. He heard the boarding call and had an idea. He took the teddy bear Rebecca was holding and removed the ribbon that was tied around its neck. He wound it around Rebecca's neck, taking her by surprise. She was confused at first at this gesture but Cyril laid his finger on her lips, stopping her from questioning.

            "This is my vow, Becky. I, Cyril Tan, swear by oath that when I have earned my keep, I will return to take Rebecca Liew as my wife and bring her with me to Vancouver. With this ribbon, I seal my vow."

            With that, he tied the ribbon into a long, dangling bow and gave her a long, passionate kiss. He said his goodbyes and his promises to call and write and made a dash for it into the departure gate before the plane flew off without it. This time, surprisingly, his leaving didn't make her feel as bad as she just did.

            Rebecca smiled at that memory. She was sure that Cyril meant what he said, but occasionally she had doubts. Sure, he may have a good job that might earn him good bucks in Vancouver. Hell, you don't get a job offer out of the country and receive high salary for it like that everyday, you know. It was a quite a cool job in Iron Giant Construction & Co.—a construction company with an abundant demand for construction—and as her boyfriend Cyril had a degree in Engineering, he was pretty much qualified for it. She remembered him calling him excitedly and telling her that his application to work in Iron Giant was approved and that he would be moving the following week. She was so happy for him that time.

            There is no way a girl wouldn't have any doubts about her boyfriend, unless she's a darn right fool or just too trusting for words, and right now, tiny little doubts began swimming in her head. What if he didn't make it there? What if the business didn't go so well as they expected to be? What if one of the projects turned out to be a screw up and he had to be laid off, leaving him to work in some simple 7-Eleven retail shop, or worse, roaming around the streets? Or maybe what if the business was really doing well? What would he do? Would he forget about him and spend all his wealth on another girl? She had to admit that there are many young lovely girls in Vancouver and anyone could take her place in his heart. What if...

            "Sis! Phone call for you!" Rebecca's youngest sister's call shook her out of her musings. She and her youngest sister share the same room and she was pretty much a night owl like Rebecca. She was always there to greet her when she comes home before actually going to bed.

            "Bring the phone here, sis!" Rebecca called from her spot. Her sister came trotting in with the cordless phone in her hand, a naughty grin on her face. She could tell from her face that Cyril was calling.

            "Hello?"

            "Hey, Becky. How's your day?" Cyril's voice automatically brought a smile to her face.

            "Pretty much a drag. We have a large case that we seriously couldn't solve," Rebecca massaged her temples. "This murderer sure is one heck of a genius."

            "Really? That really does sound like a drag. What're you doing?"

            "Taking a nice, long bath. Getting rid of the all the aches and sores."

            "I bet the sight is pretty tantalizing," Cyril said naughtily.

            "Shut up!" Rebecca scolded playfully. "You and your 'evil' fantasies!"

            "Just trying to have a little fun with my little Becky here," Cyril chuckled. "Anywho, Happy 3rd Anniversary!"

            "3rd Anniversary? What anniversary?" Rebecca was surprised.

            "You know, our anniversary," Cyril replied in an as-a-matter-of-fact way.

            "Cyril, our anniversary is on the 31st of August, Independence Day, and it's supposed to be the 8th, not the 3rd," Rebecca corrected him. Her heart began to worry. How could he even get the dates mixed up? They have been lovers since high school when she was Form 3 and he Form 5. How could he forget that? Were her worries coming true: that he had someone else and got both their anniversaries mixed up?

            "You forgetful little ding-dong," Cyril let out a sigh of defeat. "Today's 16th of July, remember? The day I gave you that ribbon and sealed my vow? It's been 3 years now, don't you remember? So, Happy 3rd Memorial Anniversary of my vow! Just in case you forget again, let me repeat my vow again..."

            As Cyril repeated the exact vow he said at the airport 3 years ago, Rebecca's heart ached with bliss. She was touched. She herself couldn't even keep track of the usual dates because of her job, but he actually remembered such a tiny thing as this ribbon anniversary. She couldn't help shedding a tear; the feeling was so overwhelming.

            All her doubts she felt before disappeared immediately as she continued to chit-chat with her love of her life.

            "A blind date? No, thanks."

            Rachel was sitting at her favourite room—the study—and was reading her favourite classic literature by William Shakespeare 'Much Ado About Nothing' when she received a midnight call from Rebecca. Evidently, Rebecca had already done chit-chatting lovie-dovies with her sweetheart.

            "Come on, Rach. It'll be cool," Rebecca persuaded. "He's a very nice guy I know in during tuition classes and he's also one of the lab guys in our crime lab. I bet you'll like him. He's, like, totally having the hicks for you."

            "All the lab guys in the crime lab have hicks on me. Which one are you talking about?" Rachel asked, bored.

            "If I told you, it wouldn't be a blind date now, would it?"

            "If you tell me, I'll still act blind."

            "You are hopeless," Rebecca groaned, the sound of her slapping her forehead could be heard.

            "Well, I can't help it if I have no interest with any of those guys in the lab," Rachel said nonchalantly. "They're..."

            "Not intellectually equipped as you are," Rebecca finished her sentence. "I know that. You always say that and then you don't give a dit about them. When are you gonna realize that no one can live alone?"

            "I'm not alone. I have my books and my family and you guys. There's nothing wrong about not having a boyfriend."

            "Yeah, but..."

            "And it's not against the law either, _and_ it's my own free will."

            Rebecca wanted to rebut her but seeing that arguing with her would be like asking a chicken to fly south, she sighed in defeat, "Alright, alright. You made your point. It's your funeral."

            "Whatever," Rachel shrugged.

            "I guess I'll let you go back to your books then."

            "Yeah. Ciao."

            Rachel waited until Rebecca hung up before she did. She stared at the phone for a while and sighed. She just couldn't understand why everyone is pestering her to have a boyfriend, as if it was a crime if she didn't. She really couldn't bring herself to like or even accept people who are not smarter than or at least as smart as her. Her co-workers often called her a perfectionist attitude a big curse on her, but she couldn't help it. If someone is not perfectly compatible for her or maybe even past her expectations in a good way, he would definitely be a total reject.

           It's not that she had never liked a guy before. She's still human, and of course she had crushes just like everyone else. It was during her practical year when she was studying for her teacher training course. She was a woman of high hopes then, planning to start off at a small scale and slowly moving up to the tops and become the professor she always wanted. Those were her golden days.

            When she reached her practical year and was allocated to an exclusive boarding school to teach, her confidence was up to the nines. With her intelligence and her wits (and her occasional sarcasm), she was immediately well-known as the female version of Severus Snape and a one-of-a-kind student teacher.

            One of the students in her class was an exceptional boy. You can say that he was pretty much a male version of Hermione Granger and he didn't fail to catch her attention. They often had disagreements on a subject and often could be seen debating their theories at each other, much to the students' amusement. Never a day went by without them having to squabble about something. Until the middle of her practical year, the boy confronted her one day after school and confessed to her that he had a crush on her ever since she started being their student teacher, with a bouquet of roses to match. For that split second, Rachel experienced an overwhelming crush for him that had been suppressed inside her for so long. And from that moment on, they became couples. Of course, they only dated outside of school and knew when was the time to be serious on studies, but her class pretty much knew about their relationship. Luckily, nothing went out.

            Later on, Rachel began to realize that this young boyfriend of hers was a bit more than just having a crush on her. He gave her elaborate gifts at sudden, unexpected times and he often called her just to check her out, as in where she was and what she was doing. He was also an easily jealous person. There was once when they were going out for a movie and Rachel was waiting outside the line while the boyfriend went to buy the tickets. Moments later, she came across her cousin whom she hadn't seen for a very, very long time. Overwhelmed, she jumped and hugged him with glee. The boyfriend just so happen to have bought the ticket and was coming out of the line when he saw her in her cousin's embrace. Jealousy took over and he pounced on her cousin, making him fall onto the floor. He cursed and swore as he kicked him over and over again. He even gave Rachel a black eye when she tried to stop him and he pushed her away. After that incident, Rachel tried to avoid him but his sweet words and soft apologies melted her heart.

            As their relationship continued, she found out that when he was confronted by her uncle whose son's been beaten by him, he had punched himself and made bruises all over himself just to make Rachel think that her uncle had hurt him. When she tried to break off the relationship, he called her day and night asking to take him back until he resorted to sneak into her room and slit his wrists in front of her. Took her hours to convince him that she wouldn't leave him again and took her weeks to get rid of the blood stains on her carpet. The last straw was him stalking her everyday without rest and also murdering a foreigner who was only being pleasant to her when he was asking directions to the KL Twin Tower. He actually murdered him right in front of her eyes and with all the blood splattered all over her body.

            It took her about a week to get out of unconsciousness (she fainted right at the spot and had to be hospitalized) and an extra 5 months to recover from the shock. The young boyfriend, although very smart, had quite a serious temper disorder, which led him to his violent and self-mutilating habits. He was institutionalized and was there ever since. Since that incident, she stopped her teacher training altogether and suddenly, despite her parents' disagreements and persuasion not to, stepped into medic school and applied for forensics major. The rest was history.

            Rachel sighed again as she tried to sweep the horrific memory away from her head. Being in the crime lab today made her feel safe. Staring at all the violent pictures and scanning through the violent cases everyday made her realize that just teaching people and educating them what's right and wrong wasn't enough to stop crimes from happening. When it comes to stepping into the real world, it's every man for himself and humans often end up succumbing to their wild animal nature. Besides, being a CSI member showed her that there are always new things to learn and more challenging things to accomplish, which has always been her first intellectual love. Nothing could get better than this.

            As she slumped on her couch slowly slipping into slumber she was left with one thought in her mind.

            'I love this job.'

A/N: Wow! Seeing the other side of the CSI members sure is an eye-opener! Reviews plz!


	16. The Answer To All Questions

A/N: OK, personal stuffs over, now let's get into the mood of the mystery and thrill, shall we?

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                                        CSI: ASIA

            Everyone was up and ready to get on with the case. They have recently received another murder case—as told by Jonathan 'coz he's the only one staying back in the crime lab (like Grissom)—about another victim from the basketball team had been killed at his own home. Turned out that Gerald, the victim, was babysitting his neighbour's kids when suddenly he was under attack by their ol' friend The Urban Legend Copycat Killer. Both his arms were chopped of and they have found one dumped somewhere near the doghouse. They couldn't find the other. His body was on the staircase and they assumed that he was trying to escape from the killer. Obviously, he was too late.

            Needless to say, this was also one of the urban legends.

            Now that the suspect's gender had taken a swift turn, Lionel and Jeremy were soon out of the list of suspicion. Everyone was now looking for a girl with dyed burgundy hair and has a taste for blood.

            Well, not exactly everyone. Judith still had doubts about the suspect. She still believed that the suspect was a guy and that this case was getting slightly personal. I mean getting back at someone who had bullied you sure wasn't a big crime—she had a few shares of getting back at people—but to kill someone for it, that was too much. She had Elaine as backup to her theory but it's just not enough to convince Jonathan otherwise. She had to get to the real culprit before the whole basketball team gets mauled or something even worse happen.

            While the CSI team was trying to figure out who the culprit was, Jonathan was busy hooking up some more papers on protective custody. This time, he wasn't taking any chances. He was going to make sure that every one of those possible victims made it out of this hellish nightmare alive. He was planning to go to SM Victoria Institution and gather the rest of the basketball team to announce their protective custody plan. At first, Rebecca volunteered to go—she definitely had a knack of wanting to announce to the people that she was going to save the world or something—but instead, Jonathan chose Judith to go with him. Elaine could guess what it was all about, but she'd rather not say anything. She could tell by Jonathan's tone and by the looks of things that he and Judith needed to be alone, so when she noticed the rest wanting to go on this 'rescue mission', she dragged them away and said loudly on purpose that she needed their help on cracking more evidence.

            In the car, Judith and Jonathan discussed briefly on Jonathan's favourite anime like Gundam Wing, Evangelion and Gatekeepers. Not that she had much idea about the anime, but she entertained him just the same. Their topic slowly drifted towards the case.

            "So, any leads yet to who might be the culprit?" Judith asked.

            "Not much," Jonathan admitted. "What I've learnt from Jeremy's personal background was that he never had many girlfriends. He had one or two during Form 1 or 2, but they weren't serious, and it was the girls who broke it off. And he's not exactly the most popular guy among girls either. He pretty much keeps himself to himself. I can't figure out who could have liked him so much to be willing to kill for him."

            "What about friends outside of school?"

            "He's, like what his friends said, a living, breathing human geek. Besides basketball or any other extra curricular activities, he doesn't go out much. Like I said, not very popular. You? Who do you think killed those people?"

            "I still think it's a guy," Judith replied firmly, "and it has to be one of the members in the basketball team."

            "Like who? I mean almost everyone there bullies Jeremy and none of them really gives a darn about him," Jonathan said as he took a left turn. "Even his group of best friends bullied him with that prank. Who else can you expect?"

            "Maybe. Just maybe…" Judith tapped her chin thoughtfully, her mind obviously working. Jonathan let out an exasperated sigh.

            "Just let it go, Jude. The suspect is already obvious. You don't have to cramp your brain trying to figure out what's not possible."

            "Now you are acting like a walking contradiction!" Judith exclaimed, glaring at Jonathan accusingly. "You always teach me to think outside the box, suspect the unsuspected and always look for the non-obvious ones, and yet you are not practicing what you preach!"

            "Well, sorry for not teaching you that when things are already screaming guilty at your face, you shouldn't think otherwise," Jonathan said, annoyed, and stopped when there was a red light.

            "Just hush and let me think for a moment, alright?" Judith said and went back to her thoughts.

            Jonathan sighed and let her be for a while. Judith continued to have that serious look on her face trying to figure out the whole thing and trying to come up with a logical theory for all this. Jonathan couldn't help feeling that she looked almost like Detective Conan or Hajime Kindaichi when she did that. After a few more minutes, they've finally reached SM Victoria Institution. Judith was still lost in her thoughts to notice and Jonathan had to shake her back to reality.

            "Hey, baka-onna. We're here!"

            "Huh?" Judith was knocked out of her senses almost immediately. "Sorry, wasn't paying attention. Let's go."

            "Do you remember to bring the documents with you?" Jonathan asked.

            "Yeah, I have," Judith waved a brown envelope at him.

            As Jonathan locked the car, without looking at Judith, he asked, "Jude, is there anything you want to tell me about?"

            "What do you mean?" Judith asked, slightly surprised, as if she knew what Jonathan meant.

            "You know what I mean. It's not right to bottle it up and keep as a secret, you know. I can see that something has happened last night and that's why you're wracking your brains so much. And you wouldn't tell me what. I thought we had a deal about not keeping secrets to each other."

            "My personal life is none of your concern anymore," Judith replied in a serious tone, "and you shouldn't be prying into other people's business unless it's professionally important. Besides I never made such a deal. You made it up."

            Jonathan wanted to rebut her again but finally decided against it, sighing, "Fine, whatever. Sooner or later you're gonna come clean with me."

            They walked all the way to the Headmaster's office to tell him about their intention. The Headmaster soon sent for the office boy to tell the people in charge of the P.A. system to make an announcement that all the basketball players gather at the basketball court immediately. The teens did as they were told and within minutes, they were all present and were sitting on the spectators' seat listening carefully to Jonathan's plans and instructions about their protective custody issue. Just then, Jonathan noticed that there were a few people missing.

            "Where are Jeremy and Lionel?" Jonathan asked.

            "Lionel has gone off to Subang Jaya with his family to bury the brother and sister," one of the team members voiced out. "Jeremy is calling in sick today and won't be in school for a month."

            "A month?" Judith was taken aback. "What was he going to do at home for a month?"

            "Personal therapy, that's what I heard," another member replied. "He got into some sort of accident and had to see a shrink for a month. Poor guy, scared out of his wits that day."

            "What happened?"

            "Well, from what I heard, Gerald—God bless his soul—locked him in the sports room for the whole night. That darn sports room hasn't had its light bulb fixed in years now and he was left there in the dark all alone. The janitor found him and he was curled up there talking nonsense like a madman. Lionel was the one who drove him home and now the shrink is pretty much trying to help him to get back to reality and cope with his fear. I think that whoever is afraid of the dark sure is a wimp!"

            "That's exactly the kind of attitude towards your teammate that got all of you in this murder frenzy jam in the first place," Jonathan said grudgingly. Judith stared secretly at the boy who made his statement just now, her mind beginning to click in comprehension. She excused herself to the bathroom and once she was inside, she took out her handphone and called Rebecca.

            "Hello?" Rebecca answered the phone.

            "It's me," Judith said. "Have you got anything on our evidence yet?"

            "Nope, not a single one. I'm stumped. I really am. I gotta admit: this is the smartest criminal we have ever encountered in years of CSI business. I fear that we'll never get our man. I'm looking through their school yearbook right now to see if anything relevant might come up from here."

            "I have a feeling that he's not smart enough. Listen, Jeremy and Lionel are not at school today and I think I've got most of it figured out. I want you to go to Jeremy's house and ask him some questions."

            "About what?" Rebecca sounded surprised.

            "Anything," Judith replied. "Just about anything that has to connect him to the case and his friends. There's something we're missing out here. One more missing piece of the puzzle that will clear the whole case. Oh, and I want you to issue out a search warrant."

            "For what? What else do you want to search about?"

            "The house of the other person who didn't come to school today."

            Rachel was sitting at her office reading through the SM Victoria Institution school yearbook. Rebecca plopped it at her desk all of a sudden and asked her to help her find any clues that could be in the yearbook that might lead to the case, and that was before she sped off to somewhere—Elaine tagging along behind her—without even giving Rachel the chance to ask. When Rachel got to the page where pictures on special events were taken, one picture caught her eye. Before she could recall what was familiar about the picture, Judith stepped in, looking quite pleased with herself.

            "You look like you've come up with something good," Rachel commented.

            "As a matter of fact I have," Judith replied, taking out an envelope. "Just raided someone's house and guess what I've found."

            Rachel opened the envelope and saw a receipt that read '**QuickFilm**** Photoshop**'. She took a look at the picture that was in the envelope and her eyes widened with interest. She shifted her gaze towards the picture she saw on the yearbook and, as the Human Library she was, it all began to make sense. Judith noticed the picture on the yearbook Rachel was gazing at and grinned.

            "So, Rach, wanna make a conformation or have you reached the verdict?"

            "I'll make some calls," Rachel smirked knowingly and punched the numbers written on the receipt.

            "Woah! Seriously that bad, huh?"

            Rebecca and Elaine were at Jeremy's house and Rebecca was talking to his mother. She brought along the protective custody papers for the parents to sign and promised that their home would be under surveillance 24/7.

            "Um, Mrs. Lee, can I just go up and have a chat with Jeremy?" Rebecca asked. "I just wanna, you know, ease his nerves a little and tell him about this protective custody thing."

            "Don't worry, Mrs. Lee," Elaine assured her. "She's quite good at cheering people up."

            "I don't see why there would be any harm to it," Mrs. Lee replied. "He's pretty much out of the hallucinations now, but still not out of the shock. Go ahead. It's the first room on the left."

            "Thanks, Mrs. Lee," Rebecca thanked her and, together with Elaine, went to where Jeremy's room was. The door was slightly opened but she knocked it anyway, just in case she'd startle him or something. She heard his voice muttering "Come in" and they let themselves in.

            "Hey, Jeremy. How're you doing?" Rebecca asked Jeremy who was sitting on his bed in his pajamas hugging his legs. "You remember us? I'm Detective Rebecca and…"

            "Yeah, I've seen you two. You're two of that nasty black CSI agent's co-workers who said I killed Cliff," Jeremy looked at them grudgingly.

            "W-ell, you can put it that way," Rebecca replied awkwardly.

            "Are you here to arrest me for the other killings too?"

            "Oh no, no, no," Rebecca said as she sat on the bed beside him. "You're out of the suspect list. I'm here to tell you that we're gonna give you protection from the Urban Legend Copycat Killer, if you've heard of him."

            "Who doesn't?" Jeremy replied, looking disturbed. "A lot of people have been talking about it. They say that it had a connection with me, 'coz the victims used to bully me, and they think that I killed them, or hired someone else to do it."

            "Is that why Gerald locked you in the sports room?" Elaine asked.

            Jeremy nodded, "He said he was going to keep me in there so that I won't have any bright ideas about getting to them. Lionel brought me home when the janitor found me. I have to admit, although he had bullied me that year, he's the only best friend I trust."

            "Really? You don't have any grudges on the people who bullied you, do you?" Elaine was skeptical as she surveyed Jeremy's room a little. Typical geek's room, just as his friends described it.

            "Nope. I believe people get what they deserve, so I usually keep quiet about it when they bug me so that when something bad happens to them, I can have the last laugh. Although seeing them dead wasn't what I had in mind, really."

            "But do you have any idea who might wanna kill for you? A girlfriend, maybe?" Rebecca asked.

            "I'm not the Romeo type, believe me," Jeremy chuckled. "Girls don't find me that attractive."

            "Why exactly are you afraid of the dark anyway, if you don't mind me asking?" Elaine inquired.

            "Well, it started off when I was a kid, back before I live here," Jeremy explained. "My cousin and I decided to sneak into my rich neighbour's home and take a dunk in his swimming pool in the middle of the night. I got adventurous and decided to swim at the deeper end of the pool. Needless to say, I almost drowned. It was dark when we were swimming and as I sank, the whole place was so dark I couldn't see a single thing. The water surrounded and the darkness was more suffocating than the water. I was rescued just in time. Funny though, it led me to be afraid of the dark instead of water. Every time I'm in the dark, I could feel the suffocation and the feeling of merciless water around me…I still couldn't get over it…"

            "I understand. No wonder you're so shook up in that sports room," Rebecca said pitifully.

            "Well, looks like someone took this bully and the other bullying seriously. Too serious, in fact," Elaine said. She noticed the school yearbook on Jeremy's table and when she picked it up, she noticed that it was the same year as the yearbook they found in Cliff's home. She waved it at Jeremy and said, "I see you have the school yearbook."

            "I read it from time to time," Jeremy replied, holding out his hand for it. Elaine passed it to him. "Brings back memories once in a while."

            "I've read it too," Rebecca said. "I got one from Cliff's home. Your school sure is interesting, unlike my high school."

            "It has its specialties," Jeremy said as he flipped through the pages. He stopped at a page and smiled, "Ah, this one's my favourite."

            Rebecca and Elaine leaned over to look. On it was a picture of Jeremy wearing a tuxedo and Gary wearing a bad boy gangster outfit, smiling widely and posing at the camera. Between them was a girl with burgundy hair and a one-piece blue dress. She had lovely make-up and looked very, very beautiful. Elaine and Rebecca looked at each other; she looked exactly like the woman Jothan Lo the 3rd had described!

            "Jeremy, who is this girl in the picture with you guys?" Elaine asked, pointing at the burgundy-haired girl.

            Jeremy let out a laugh before replying, "Got you too, didn't it? Everyone kept asking the same question after that Drama Contest about who he is and everyone ended up being shocked. We won the Grand Prize for that drama, you know."

            "He?" Elaine raised an eyebrow.

            "Drama Contest?" Rebecca was startled.

            "Yeah! His make-up fooled you, didn't he? As you can see, we're an all boys' school and we couldn't simply just team up with the girls at Form 6, and practically _no one_ wants to play the role of the leading actress, so he volunteered. He got me too, really, and I was playing the leading actor."

            "Who exactly is he?" Elaine and Rebecca asked simultaneously.

            "It's Lionel. Lionel Han," Jeremy replied, still amused. "He's a genius, isn't he? Anything wrong, detectives?"

            Justin was checking out the body of Gerald on his surgery table. It looked pretty gross seeing a body with no arms except one that looked pretty mangled, which was placed in another tray on the table. He had expected to find just wounds and no clues to the case and was ready to call in the cleaners to clean and 'repair' the arm on the body when Jonathan came in.

            "Hey, Chief, what brings you here?" Justin asked.

            "Well, I was hoping maybe there could be some evidence to pinpoint our suspect," Jonathan replied.

            "You guys got the murderer already?" Justin was surprised.

            "Just a suspect. Unless we find evidence to back it up, we cannot arrest him," Jonathan said as he scanned through the body, just in case Justin had missed out something.

            "So it's back to a he now. Jude was right after all. It is a he."

            "Is that what you guys been discussing during your date last night?" Jonathan asked. "Or is there something else you guys have been discussing?"

            "Pretty much just the case," Justin said as he took off his plastic gloves. "And it's not a date. It's just a simple night out with a friend. That's all it was."

            "So you guys are not going anywhere near Danger Zone yet, am I right?"

            "What are you trying to imply here, Jon?"

            "Only that you have missed a spot," Jonathan replied nonchalantly. "Take a look at this."

            Justin moved over to where Jonathan was pointing. There, on the skin of the left hacked arm where the socket was, was a small wrinkly dent with something wet on it. Jonathan used the evidence cotton bud to take a swab of it while Justin checked out the rest. The lab guy in charge of cleaning the body came in and Jonathan asked him to pass this cotton bud to Rachel so that she could take it to the DNA lab to analyze it.

            "Looks like this wet stuff has been digesting a wee bit of the skin and part of the exposed flesh," Justin commented. The only fluid that can ever digest food before we swallow it is the saliva. It has enough pH to do so. But this has to mean that…eww! Our murderer also has a taste for blood!"

            "How long has Gerald been dead?" Jonathan asked.

            "His neighbour kid found him at about 7 a.m. this morning, so I guess he's about more than 12 hours dead."

            "How long does it take for human saliva to digest food?"

            "According to human body temperature, it'll take at least 10 to 20 minutes for human saliva to break down food into pieces. But since it was room temperature, it could take even longer. But then again, he's 12 hours dead, wouldn't take too long for it to be broken down, although just a really tiny portion of it."

            "Mmhmm," Jonathan muttered thoughtfully. "So the murderer killed about 12 hours ago, waited for him to die and started chomping on one of his arms and got a little messy. I have a gut-sickening feeling where the rest of the missing portions of the other victims went to. Does this sound like part of a movie to you, Justin?"

            "Yeah, it sure does sound a little," Justin replied, recalling a movie that almost symbolizes this ritual.

            "I'll go check on Rach. You can do whatever you want with the body now," Jonathan said as he left the autopsy room. Before he stepped out of the room, he stopped and, with his back facing Justin, he asked, "Do you believe that certain feelings can be repaired, even if they've already broken beyond recognition?"

            "I suppose so," Justin replied. "If there is hope, there will always be room for repair."

            "…Thanks, Justin," Jonathan said as he finally walked out of the room. Justin sighed as he moved the body towards the cleaning sink with the help of the lab guy who came back after passing the DNA sample to Rachel.

            "Jude, you are one lucky gal."

            Meanwhile, Jonathan went into the DNA lab where Rachel did her final testing on the swab Jonathan got from Gerald's shoulder. He stood there quietly, not wanting to bother the Human Library at her work. When she was done, she got the DNA codes printed out on transparent paper. By then, she realized that she was being watched and turned around and got right down to business.

            "You remember the DNA swabs we took on those friends of Jeremy's?" Rachel asked. Jonathan nodded and she continued, "Well, most of them are dead, so who's the one left to match?"

            "The odd one out," Jonathan grinned in triumph at the DNA codes shown in front of him.

            Lionel was getting ready to mount his bike and was going to ride to his school. Checking by the attire, you could guess that he was on his way to practice some basketball moves. But before he could move out into the driveway, he was stopped short by our famous CSI members who were standing in front of a very worried-looking Han family.

            "What's going on?" Lionel asked, curious.

            "Lionel Han," Jonathan began to read his rights as he moved over to handcuff a startled Lionel. "You are under arrest for multiple murders. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in the court of law…"

A/N: How did they figure it out? Don't ask me! Just carry on reading! Reviews plz!


	17. Secrets Unveiled

A/N: We've got the murderer and solved the case! Wanna know who he is? Read on! Oh, and just like in the CSI series, try to imagine the crime committed when the CSI members gave their deduction to the case. This chappie is gonna be a wee bit longer than usual.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA

            The CSI members gathered around Lionel in the questioning room, looking quite satisfied and triumphant about something. Lionel looked at them as if he had no business being in this room. Before the CSI members could say anything, Lionel had a head-start.

            "Hey, what are you guys putting me in here for? We're getting ready for the IH competition, the most important competition in all basketball history and I should be at school practicing my throws, not sitting here being questioned like a criminal!"

            "Oh, don't worry, it won't take very long, Lionel," Jonathan replied. "We're all here to tell you a little story."

            "What?" Lionel looked at the head of the crime lab in disbelief. "I've been brought all the way here just to listen to some sort of silly 5-year-old story? What do you take me for, a kid? I have no time for this, I gotta go…"

            "Patience, boy, patience," Judith said as she and Elaine came forward to sit him back down. "Patience is virtue, you know. Didn't your Moral teacher teach you that?"

           "OK, we'll start this story from the very beginning," Jonathan said as he played with his gun. "It all started with a boy, who was a jock, and his 4 friends. They were like peas in a pod. They ate together, they played basketball together, they hang out together, they watch horror movies together and they even slept together when they're having their boy slumber parties. They are practically inseparable. There are no friends closer than they were."

            "But one of the friendships ended because of a harmless prank," Elaine continued. "It was the day when these 5 friends gathered together at the jock's house to celebrate the end of the PMR examination. They had so much fun and had too much to drink that they decided to play a trick on the bookworm of the gang. They knew that the bookworm had a certain fear for the dark and would never sleep without the nightlights on, so they decided to put the bookworm inside the storeroom for an hour or so just to give him a small fright."

            "Somehow they forgot about that bookworm because they were having too much fun drinking and celebrating," Rebecca said her share of the story. "The poor bookworm stayed in that dusty, dark and cold storeroom for the whole night. It was only about morning and when the gang was slightly sober that they remembered the bookworm. They rushed to his aid and found that the bookworm was so petrified and was so phobic of the dark that he suffered a minor shock. He was so afraid that they would do the same thing again to him that he decided not to hang out with them so much anymore."

            "Normal people would've just forgotten about the prank and continue to hang with their friends as usual," Jonathan said, "but this bookworm didn't. It was then that the jock found out that the bookworm had been bullied a lot by other people in his basketball team just because he was a reserve and serves no significant importance to the team, except as a punching bag. The jock's other best friends also played along with the basketball team members. The bookworm thought that the jock and his gang were the only true friends he had, but after the prank, he realized that even friends would betray him, so he stopped being too much of a close friend anymore."

            "What the bookworm didn't know," Judith said as she moved closer towards Lionel, "is that there was someone who wouldn't stand him being away from the team and wouldn't stand letting him being bullied and pushed over. That someone decided to help him get back at all the people who had wronged him and make them pay for what they have done to the bookworm. That someone is you, Lionel. You are the knight of vengeance behind his back."

            "What…? _I'm_ the murderer…?" Lionel laughed nervously. "You gotta be kidding me…right? You know I wouldn't kill my best friends! They've been with me since the beginning of high school! I wouldn't…"

            "Oh, yes, you would," Jonathan said as he fiddled with the safety click of the gun. "You would do anything to make Jeremy feel safe and secure and happy, even if it means killing the person who hurt him deeply."

            "You're not making any sense! You've seen it for yourself! I've got alibis! My siblings were killed when I was downstairs with my friends in the party! I received the call from the murderer! And Cliff was murdered at Alor Setar, and I was at home for the mourning period! You were at my house interrogating me! You should've known better than to accuse me!"

            "Yes, you didn't kill your siblings and Cliff," Elaine said, lighting her cigarette. "But you were the mastermind behind all this. You have provided the murder weapon and the instructions for them to do your dirty work before you eliminated them yourself. The first murder was done by Cliff, under your orders. You threatened to expose his horny affairs with the girls he picked up and you threatened to tell his parents about him making one of his girls pregnant and forcing her to abort it. I've been walking around your house for a while that day when we questioned you. I was smoking, remember? And I looked over your house. I saw that at the knife rack, there was one knife missing. First, I thought maybe the murderer sneaked into your home from the back door at your kitchen, but the rayon thread was a dead giveaway. And also, close body contact in a cramped party place would make people at least feel if anyone was going in or out of the house."

            "Rayon clothes are way out of season and besides being a jock, your friend Nicholas told us that you were a fashion freak, never missing a single chance to try out the latest fashion trend," Rebecca gave her deduction on the case. "Part of the rayon thread was covered with tiny particles left from moth balls, and moth balls only come from putting things in the storeroom for too long, which means that you have been into rayon clothes for a while and once the trend was over, you stashed it into the storeroom."

            "You gave Cliff the rayon shirt to distract us from the investigation and also gave the knife to Cliff the day before the party, and you went to the nearest hardware store—namely the Jothan Lo's Fixit & Co—dress as a woman to buy a new and sharpened axe and gave that to Cliff too," Justin said. "You ordered him to enter the house through the window of your siblings' room because of his ability to climb and ordered him to commit the murders and make the phone call. And at the state of the guests' confusion, Cliff came to the party late pretending to be unaware of the murder, just like you told him to be. And before the murder, you ordered Cliff to sandpaper the brand of the axe so that we won't find out where it came from."

            "This is insane. Why would I want to kill my own brothers and sister?" Lionel asked. Jonathan could see that he was pretending to be innocent and calm about all these accusations.

            "Because after the prank, you tried to find out why he stopped being your friend so much, and it turned out that besides your basketball team members, your siblings have been also giving him a hard time," Jonathan said. "You found out about Jeremy's job as a part-time night tuition teacher and your siblings being part of his class, and they treated him more like a sucker than a teacher because they knew about the prank you and your friends did to him and his phobia of the dark. You couldn't let that go unpunished, could you?"

            "Then you tell me, how did I kill Cliff? You knew I wasn't with them at the concert where he was murdered! I was at home mourning!" Lionel was still indignant about letting the cat out of the bag.

            "That, my friend," Rachel said, "was done by another of your friend Gary. You ordered Gary to get rid of Cliff to silence him and also punish him for pulling the prank on Jeremy. You threatened to tell on Gary about him being in a teenage correctional institute that he had kept secret from his high-classed girlfriend and ordered him to finish Cliff off. You gave him the murder weapon and the gloves so that he won't get his prints on and gave him the rope and that special backpack so that he could hide the blood-stained clothes and a piece of his gut inside to be later passed to you. You also gave him instructions on how to kill him and how to hang him on the tree and all. But he made just a few simple mistakes."

            "He lost the murder weapon you gave him," Judith said. "He got it confiscated by the teacher because he was showing it off to his ERT friends and his girlfriend and the teacher thought that knife was too dangerous and not suitable for cooking. He was afraid that if he didn't finish the job, he'll be in big trouble of exposure of his darkest secrets. So he had to go to get something new, something that is worth to be a weapon. He got Jeremy's army knife when he went to his house to borrow his homework. After doing the murder as you ordered and after hiding the evidence and everything, he made another mistake. When he and the gang came over to check out where Cliff is, Gary accidentally exposed his crime by saying that he was 'hanging at the tree dead'. That was a dead giveaway (**A/N: If you don't remember that go to Chap 5 and Chap 11 and take a look**) because if he didn't commit the crime he wouldn't have known Cliff hung on the tree."

            "You found out about him using Jeremy's army knife and that got you more powered to kill him, so you used a more wicked urban legend to ruin his life—by using the kidney removal legend," Justin said, "just to make him suffer a more horrible fate than death. You and your gang have been in his house for a slumber party before and you're the only one who knew very well the ins and outs of his house because you've been planning this for a while. And this time you ordered Nicholas to do it because you knew he was the only person that studies in Science Stream and his father was a surgeon and that you knew he also had a dark secret to keep—he once went to the hospital when he was a kid to look for his father to give him his lunch and was curious about the breathing support machine in one of the ICU wards. He played with it and accidentally turned off the machine in the process. Needless to say, the patient almost got killed."

            "You threatened to tell that to his father and forced him to commit the murder," Elaine said. "As usual, you prepared the murder weapon and the instructions, told him about the secret door in the wine cellar and he did the dirty work. Finally the rest of the murders, you did it with your own two hands. Seeing that your attempt to murder your friends using them as guinea pigs to carry on your plans worked, you finally decided to try it yourself. You used all kinds of urban legends you watched in the horror movies on those guys who wronged Jeremy and made them pay."

            "First you killed Nicholas using the urban legend about not turning light on because you knew that he shared the room with his younger brother and he hated it when the brother comes in and turned the lights on without checking if he was asleep or not," Rebecca deduced. "Then you killed the twins Derek and Desmond with the urban legend about the headlights, Kevin with the hallway death urban legend, Terry with the dog urban legend, etc, etc…You were really good. You've done exactly what a horror movie would do and you could've left us baffled forever and get away with it."

            "But you have made one simple mistake with Gerald though," Jonathan pointed out, "because you were so angry with this guy that you ate a part of him right at the spot."

            "I…ate Gerald?" Lionel widened his eyes. "What do you mean I ate a part of Gerald? You make me sound like a cannibal or something."

            "Hannibal Lector," Justin said. "Does that ring a bell? Besides copying the movie patterns of Urban Legends and H2O, you were also copying a small portion of the movie Hannibal. In the movie Hannibal Lector killed his victims and ate them. You took a portion of the body from every victim you killed or ordered to kill and ate them out of anger and out of vengeance. You ate them because you hated them so much that you just want them to dissolve and be gone or probably even consume their soul in you just like that."

            "But Gerald had done something to Jeremy you were so angry of him doing," Rachel continued. "He did something to Jeremy you swore you'll never do again—he locked him in the sports room and left him there for the whole night. When the janitor came to clean the sports room, he was shocked to see Jeremy curled at one corner mumbling to himself and barely being able to get a grip on reality. He had to stay at home for one month straight and receive personal therapy. You were so mad at Gerald that you killed him using the other babysitter urban legend and waited until he bled to death before sitting beside his body and ate one of his hacked arms raw."

            "We found your DNA from the drool that dripped on the left hacked arm of Gerald," Justin said as he took out a transparent plastic paper showing DNA codes and a picture of Gerald's body on the floor with the hacked left arm circled. You can hide your evidence and your murder weapon and everything, but you cannot hide your DNA. You can't even deny it. Looks like you're pretty much a sloppy eater when it comes to rage, huh?"

            "You were so angry and so pissed off at Gerald for locking Jeremy in that dark sports room that it went up to your head in those steam and heat to think straight anymore," Judith concluded. "You wanted to consume his soul there and then and make him pay for what he had done to Jeremy," Judith leaned closer towards Lionel and stared at him straight in the eyes and said in a low voice, "You have a crush on him, don't you? That's your dark secret—you're in love with Jeremy."

            "What…? Are you mad? I'm not gay! What the heck are you thinking?" Lionel's face twisted in some sort of a half-shocked-half-denial look and was going pale. The rest of the CSI members were shocked too; they had no idea she could think of something such as absurd as that.

            "Don't lie to me," Judith said as she fished out a picture and tossed it in front of Lionel. Everyone lowered their bodies to take a look because they had never thought there would be new evidence. Only Rachel wasn't surprised to see it because she had been shown that picture before. They, except Rachel, were shocked to see that it was a picture of Lionel and Jeremy together pretty much naked with only a bed sheet over their lower part of the body and that Lionel was actually kissing Jeremy on the cheek. It looked as if they were posing in a private photo studio or something. Lionel looked really pale indeed.

            "Admit it, Lionel," Judith said, putting her hands on her hips. "You were having a crush on Jeremy and you were so in love with him that you would do anything for him, even if it means destroying the people that hurt him. When you and your family went to Subang Jaya that evening, I've snuck into your home and I've found this in your mini-briefcase in your closet. It came with a receipt which led me to your cousin's photo studio downtown. He told me that you and Jeremy were just fooling around and took this picture for fun, but you have your own agenda. You _wanted_ to take that picture because you always wanted to be this close with Jeremy without him suspecting anything. Lucky for you he didn't."

           Lionel looked down at the picture and took it slowly, putting it close to his chest, his face looking defeated and down. No one tried to stop him. Judith laid her hand on his shoulder and said kindly, "I know you have strong feelings for Jeremy, and I understand deeply how it feels to love someone so deeply and when that someone you love gets hurt you might feel helpless for not trying to help him. I understand how it feels when you are willing to do anything to make him happy and secure, but killing is not the way. The more you hate and kill the people that hurt your Jeremy, the more serious the hate would become because there would always be someone else to hurt him again. You can protect him whatever way you can, but this is not the way."

            As she spoke, she slipped her hand into Lionel's jacket and took out a small bottle of sleeping pills. That was something else the other CSI members didn't expect to see, not even Rachel. Lionel again was taken aback by Judith's knowledge of the pills in his jacket pocket. Judith shook her head and sighed, saying, "I knew you would do this. After making sure that everyone was eliminated and that no one will ever harm Jeremy again, you're thinking of committing suicide to punish yourself for pulling the first prank, aren't you? It's not worth it, Lionel, it's not worth it."

            Finally, Lionel buried his head in his arms and slumped over onto the table, sobbing, "They hurt Jeremy. They hurt him so badly. So bad that he didn't want…to be with us…or with me anymore…I couldn't stand him being away…I love him…I love him…so…much…"

A/N: Now that's colossal! So, have you guessed the right suspect? Have you expected that it was him, or was it someone else in your mind? Ngee he he he! Evil giggle Reviews plz!


	18. Case Closed

A/N: Case closed for now and congrats to the CSI Asia team for cracking the case! Now we're coming to a closure with something more relaxing. Short and sweet, so enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from CSI. This is an original fanfiction.

                                                               CSI: ASIA

            "S-E-R-E-N-I-T-Y, Serenity! Hah! Another triple _and_ double-letter word! Guess I'm gonna win this time!"

            "Not fair! I haven't got enough vowels!"

            The CSI members were playing Scrabble with Justin watching at the side as the point keeper. The case was finally over and Lionel was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Cliff, Gary, Cliff and the other members of the basketball team. He will be sent to a juvenile home and will remain there until he was old enough to be sent into prison to serve the rest of his life sentence. It was a bad mistake for Judith, Jonathan and Elaine to challenge the Human Library Rachel because as Justin calculated, she was leading and fast. She had the upper hand in the game and the other players were getting pretty frustrated.

            "Yes! I got a word…M-O-N-S-T-E-R, Monster!" Elaine exclaimed and gestured Justin to count the marks. "So, Jude, tell me again, how exactly did you break into Lionel's house to get that picture?"

            "I didn't exactly break into his house. I simply used the old card-in-the-slot trick and went in," Judith said as she stared feverishly at her piece to see what word she could make. "It was a piece of cake, no biggie. Ah, I got a word…T-I-G-E-R and add an A in here which makes R-A-G-E! Yeah, baby! I'm going for the gold!"

            "And Rach," Elaine turned towards Rachel who was taking a sip from her 'I'm No. #1' mug. "I didn't know that you actually were together with Jude in suspecting Lionel being the culprit!"

            "Just doing my job as a Human Library," Rachel replied. "Whatever you have discovered in the end is not entirely my business."

            "Searching someone's house without a warrant and withholding evidence is against protocol, Jude," Jonathan warned as he made a word Y-U-L-E-T-I-D-E on the Scrabble board. "You're lucky I don't demerit you or something. You too, Rach, for withholding evidence and knowledge about the case."

            "Come on, chill out, Mark David!" Judith waved his warning away, resulting to a venomous look from her head of the crime lab. "You wanna get a clue to solve the mystery, you gotta go down to the edge, man! Lighten up a little, won't you? Besides, I _did_ have a warrant, but it so happens that no one was at home, so there."

            "Hey, guys!" Rebecca, who wasn't in the recreational room playing the Scrabble game, came barging into the room looking very excited indeed. "Hey, you guys remember our old friend from high school Wilkins Lim?"

            "Do I?!" Elaine exclaimed, turning sharply at her. "He was the bomb in high school, and he was our ol' Jude's puppy love here! What about him?"

            "He just inherited his grandpa's fortune and first thing he did was fulfill his life-long dream: opening a casino! It's called 'Viva Kuala Lumpur' and it has just opened tonight! We're all invited to go!"

            "Yayy! I can play Cho-Dai-Dee (a Hong Kong kind of gambling game)!!" Elaine cheered and got up with a thrice, rushing out of the recreational room with Rebecca. Justin followed suite; he didn't mind a little gambling or two.

            "Hey, not fair! I was about to win this game!" Rachel protested at first, then stared at the Scrabble board for a while before calling, "Hey, guys! Wait for me!"

            That leaves Judith and Jonathan all alone in the recreational room. Judith chuckled and put away the Scrabble board and its letters. Jonathan asked curiously, "Aren't you going to go too? I thought you're an outlaw and wouldn't miss gambling for the world."

            "Let's just say I'm an outlaw who has limits," Judith replied.

            "So, uh…how did you guess that Lionel was gay?"

            "Anyone who had fallen in love more than 5 times in a row would easily notice if someone else is in love, whether he's gay or straight. And I say it through experience, if you know what I mean."

            "Then…uh…how did you know that he would, you know, want to commit suicide after he completed his revenge over all the basketball members?"

            "Coz that's what I did when I lost my 3rd boyfriend to a car accident." Judith replied nonchalantly. "I guess I'm actually seeing a little bit of myself in him."

            "You…You what??" Jonathan was shocked. "You actually…You actually committed suicide?! I thought you said that…"

            "I know—that it's not worth it and that committing suicide is one of the stupidest things to do. Well, I didn't know it until I actually did it. I was there in the ambulance when he said his last words and died. I was so devastated that I couldn't think straight. I took my mother's headache pills and stuffed them all into my gut," Judith replied as she slipped the Scrabble box into the shelf. "And my mother had to rush me to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. Thank goodness that didn't happen during my last worse off relationship, huh?"

            "You're not still sore about us in college, are you?" Jonathan asked, his face showing a slightly worried look.

            "Of course not. Why would I?" Judith replied, her voice obviously sounding a little hurt.

            "Because a person who was in love once could tell whether someone is hurt about past relationships, that's why."

            "Look," Judith turned abruptly towards Jonathan. "That was back in college, OK? I was the one who had that silly crush on you and I was the one to call off the relationship, remember? My mother didn't like you, and you sure didn't find favour in my dad's eyes, and after calling off the relationship, I realized that there's nothing worth for me to hold on to the old feelings anymore, alright? Sure, maybe all my feelings and sacrifices to be with you and all the sweet nothings we talk about in the phone and all that has been flushed down the toilet, but life must go on, right? It's no biggie."

            "Hey, I know I kinda made a bad impression on your folks back then," Jonathan tried to speak for himself, "but that time I was nervous. Guys always feel nervous when they're asked by their girlfriends to meet the parents. I am still a little sore about it too, and I'm sorry that our relationship was a little bit blur since then…"

            "Blur? It wasn't blur, it was practically non-existing! We meet in college everyday, talk about nothing but your stupid anime and all, and then we just go home! My mom was right—you're too young for me and you're not in the right mind to ask me out on a date or something! Normal people would! Not you though! You just sit around marveling at your Genzomaden Saiyuki and your Gundam Wing and your Evangelion and all that! Hey, I like anime too, but that doesn't mean I should be hanging on it 24/7! That is not normal, OK? Sometimes I myself wonder how I was able to tolerate you! Love _is_ blind!"

            "Sunimase, OK? Sunimase! I'm really, really sorry about all this. I didn't mean for this to happen. I still remember the day you confessed your feelings to me during the Leadership Conference at Sunway Lagoon back then…I am flattered, really, I am. I just can't help myself. I needed time to adjust to this new kind of relationship you've offered me and…I guess I screwed up, huh?"

            "Big time," Judith replied, folding her arms and turning her back at him.

            "Well…would it be OK if we go and grab some supper then at Hard Rock Café? Just the two of us?" Jonathan asked hopefully.

            "Nah, it's not worth it. Our relationship is not worth the trouble anymore."

            "Come on, don't be sentimental here. Please? As friends?"

            Judith turned around and saw Jonathan holding out his hand with a hopeful look on his face. Judith finally sighed and said, "Oh, alright. But just as a friend. No more than that, you got me?"

            "Absolutely," Jonathan grinned.

            So, after turning off the lights of the recreational room, the couple—now friends—walked out of the crime lab and out of the building to enjoy their supper.

A/N: So, how did you like it so far? Unexpected? Shocking? Surprising? Heartwarming? Well, whatever you think, I sure enjoyed writing it though! Reviews plz and ta-ta for now!


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